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EXISTENCE AND ATTRIBUTES 


DISCOURSES 


** 


UPON THE 


OF GOD. 


wf 
BY STEPHEN CHARNOCK, B.D., 


FELLOW OF NEW COLLEGE, OXFORD. 


WITH HIS LIFE AND CHARACTER, 


BY WILLIAM SYMINGTON, D.D. 


IN TWO VOLUMES. 
VOn, TL 


NEW YORK: 


ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS, 
No. 285 BROADWAY. 


1854. 


ETE EI PE NES 
STEREOTYFED BY 
THOMAS B. SMITH, 

216 William St. N. ¥. 


NRO SETAE 
PRINTED BY 
JOHN A. GRAY, 
87 Cliff St. 


CONTENTS OF VOL. II. 


DISCOURSE X. 
ON THE POWER OF GOD. 
PAGE 


Jon, xxvi.14.—Lo |! these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of 
bim? but the thunder of his power who can understand?........ wi aieinase wisisioi aie 


DISCOURSE XI. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 


Exopvs, xv. 11.—Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee, 
glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders ?.,...... Be eieiniape ve va: eat basse 108 


DISCOURSE XII. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 


Mark, x. 18.—And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good # There is none 
good but one, that is, God. ce... seseneercsceecerenceccserccccececcccrere 209 


DISCOURSE XII. 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 


Psa, cut, 19.—The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens: and his kingdom 
Tuleth over all... .ccccceccccccccccseesceccceccccecccces 


DISCOURSE XIV. 
ON GOD'S PATIENCE. 


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acquit the wicked: the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and 
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DISCOURSE X. 
ON THE POWER OF GOD. 


Jos xxvi, 14.—Lo!, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of 
him? but the thunder of his power who can understand ? 


BixpaD had, in the foregoing chapter, entertained Job with a dis- 
course of the dominion and power of God, and the purity of his 
righteousness, whence he argues an impossibility of the justification 
of man in his presence, who is no better than a worm. J ob, in this 
chapter, acknowledges the greatness of God’s power, and descants 
more largely upon it than Bildad had done; but doth preface it with 
a kind of ironical speech, as if he had not acted a friendly part, or 
spake little to the purpose, or the matter in hand: the subject of 
Job’s discourse was the worldly happiness of the wicked, and the 
calamities of the godly: and Bildad reads him a lecture, of the ex- 
tent of God’s dominion, the number of his armies, and the unspotted 
rectitude of his nature, in comparison of which the purest creatures 
are foul and crooked. Job, therefore, from ver. 1—4, taxeth him in 
a kind of scoffing manner, that he had not touched the point, but 
rambled from the subject in hand, and had not applied a salve pro- 
per to this sore (ver. 2): ‘“ How hast thou helped him that is without 
power? how savest thou the arm of him that hath no strength ?” &e. ; 
your discourse is so impertinent, that it will neither strengthen a 
weak person, nor instruct a simple one. But since Bildad would 
take up the argument of God’s power, and discourse so short of it, 
Job would show that he wanted not his instructions in that kind, 
and that he had more distinct conceptions of it than his antagonist 
had uttered: and therefore from ver. 5 to the end of the. chapter, he 
. doth magnificently treat of the power of God in several branches. 
And (ver, 5) he begins with the lowest. “Dead things are formed 
from under the waters, and the inhabitants thereof:” You read me 
a lecture of the power of God in the heavenly host: indeed it is visi- 
ble there, yet of a larger extent; and monuments of it are found in 
the lower parts. What do you think of those dead things under the 
earth and waters, of the corn that dies, and by the moistening influ- 
ences of the clouds, springs up again with a numerous progeny and 
merease for the nourishment of man? What do you think of those 
varieties of metals and minerals conceived in the bowels of the earth : 
those pearls and riches in the depths of the waters, midwifed by this 
power of God? Add to these those more prodigious creatures in the 

* Munster, 


6 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


sea, the inhabitants of the waters, with their vastness and variety, 
which are all the births of God’s power; both in their first creation 
by his mighty voice, and their propagation by his cherishing provi- 
dence. Stop not here, but consider also that his power extends to 
hell; either the graves the repositories of all the crumbled dust that 
hath yet been in the world (for so hell is sometimes taken in Scrip- 
ture: ver. 6, “Hell is naked before him, and destruction hath no 
covering.”) The several lodgings of deceased men are known to 
him: no screen can obscure them from his sight, nor their dissolu- 
tion be any bar to his power, when the time is come to compact 
those mouldered bodies to entertain again their departed souls, either 
for weal or woe. The grave, or hell, the place of punishment, is 
naked before him; as distinctly discerned by him, as a naked body 
in all its lineaments by us, or a dissected body is in all its parts by a 
skilful eye. 

Destruction hath no covering; none can free himself from the 
power of his hand. Every person in the bowels of hell; every per- 
son punished there is known to him, and feels the power of his 
wrath. From the lower parts of the world he ascends to the con- 
sideration of the power of God in the creation of heaven and earth ; 
“He stretches out the north over the empty places” (ver. 7). The 
north, or the north pole, over the air, which, by the Greeks, was 
called void or empty, because of the tenuity and thinness of that 
element; and he mentions here the north, or north pole, for the 
whole heaven, because it is more known and apparent than the 
southern pole. “ And hangs the earth upon nothing :” the massy 
and weighty earth hangs like a thick globe in the midst of a thin 
air, that there is as much air on the one side of it, as on the other. 
The heavens have no prop to sustain them in their height, and the 
earth hath no basis to support it in its place. The heavens are as if 
you saw a curtain stretched smooth in the air without any hand to 

old it; and the earth is as if you saw a ball hanging in the air with- 
out any solid body to under-prop it, or any line to hinder it from 
falling; both standing monuments of the omnipotence of God. He 
then takes notice of his daily power in the clouds; “He binds up 
the waters in his thick clouds, and the cloud is not rent under them” 
(ver. 8). He compacts the waters together in clouds, and keeps them 
by his power in the air against the force of their natural gravity and 
heaviness, till they are fit to flow down upon the earth, and perform 
his pleasure in the places for which he designs them. ‘The cloud 
is not rent under them ;” the thin air is not split asunder by the 
weight of the waters contained in the cloud above it. He causes 
them to distil by drops, and strains them, as it were, through a 
thin lawn, for the refreshment of the earth; and suffers them not 
to fall in the whole lump, with a violent torrent, to waste the 
industry of man, and bring famine upon the world, by destroy- 
ing the fruits of the earth. What a wonder it would be to see 
but one entire drop of water hang itself but one inch above the 
ground, unless it be a bubble which is preserved by the air en- 
closed within it! What a wonder would it be to see a gallon 
of water contained in a thin cobweb as strongly as in a vossel 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 7 


of brass! Greater is the wonder of Divine power in those thin 
bottles of heaven, as they are called (Job xxxviii. 37); and therefore 
called his clouds here, as being daily instances of his omnipotence: 
that the air should sustain those rolling vessels, as it should seem, 
weightier than itself; that the force of this mass of waters should 
not break so thin a prison, and hasten to its proper place, which is 
below the air: that they should be daily confined against their 
natural inclination, and held by so slight a chain; that there should 
be such a gradual and successive falling of them, as if the air were 
pierced with holes like a gardener’s watering-pot, and not fall in one 
entire body to drown or drench some parts of the earth. These are 
hourly miracles of Divine power, as little regarded as clearly visible. 
He proceeds (ver. 9), ‘He holds back the face of his throne, and 
spreads the clouds upon it.” The clouds are designed as curtains to 
cover the heavens, as well as vessels to water the earth (Ps. cxlvii. 
8). As a tapestry curtain between the heavens, the throne of God 
(isa. xvi. 1), and the earth his footstool: the heavens are called his 
throne, because his power doth most shine forth there, and magnifi- 
cently declare the glory of God; and the clouds are as a screen be- 
tween the scorching heat of the sun, and the tender plants of the 
earth, and the weak bodies of men. From hence he descends to the 
sea, and considers the Divine power apparent in the bounding of it 
(ver. 10); “ He hath compassed the waters with bounds, till the day 
and night come to an end.” This is several times mentioned in 
Scripture as a signal mark of Divine strength (Job xxxviii. 8; Prov. 
vill. 27). He hath measured a place for the sea, and struck the lim- 
its of it as with a compass, that it might not mount above the sur- 
face of the land, and ruin the ends of the earth’s creation; and this, 
while day and night have their mutual turns, till he shall make an 
end of time by removing the measures of it. The bounds of the 
tumultuous sea are, in many places, as weak as the bottles of the 
upper waters; the one is contained in thin air, and the other re- 
strained by weak sands, in many places, as well as by stubborn rocks 
in others; that, though it swells, foams, roars, and the waves, en- 
couraged and egged on by strong winds, come like mountains against 
the shore; they overflow it not, but humble themselves when they 
come near to those sands, which are set as their lists and limits, and 
retire back to the womb that brought them forth, as if they were 
ashamed and repented of their proud invasion: or else it may be 
meant of the tides of the sea, and the stated time God hath set it for its 
ebbing and flowing, till night and day come to an end;s both that 
the fluid waters should contain themselves within due bounds, and 
keep their perpetually orderly motion, are amazing arguments of 
Divine power. He passes on to the consideration of the commo- 
tions in the air and earth, raised and stilled by the power of God; 
“The pillars of heaven tremble, and are astonished at his reproof.” 
By pillars of heaven are not meant angels, as some think, but either 
the air, called the pillars of heaven in regard of place, as it continues 
and knits together the parts of the world, as pillars do the upper 
and nether parts of a building: as the lowest parts of the earth are 
* Coccei in loc. 


8 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


called the foundations of the earth, so the lowest parts of the 
heaven may be called the pillars of heaven :' or else by that phrase 
may be meant mountains, which seem, at a distance, to touch the 
sky, as pillars do the top of a structure; and so it may be spoken, 
according to vulgar capacity, which imagines the heavens to be sus- 
tained by the two extreme parts of the earth, as a convex body, or 
to be arched by pillars; whence the Scripture, according to common 
apprehensions, mentions the ends of the earth, and the utmost parts 
of the heavens, though they have properly no end, as being round. 
The power of God is seen in those commotions in the air and earth, 
by thunders, hghtnings, storms, earthquakes, which rack the air, 
and make the mountains and hills tremble as servants before a frown- 
ing and rebuking master. And as he makes motions in the earth 
and air, so is his power seen in their influences upon the sea; ‘‘ He 
judges the sea with his power, and by his understanding he smites 
through the proud” (ver. 12). At the creation he put the waters 
into several channels, and caused the dry land to appear barefaced 
for a habitation for man and beasts; or rather, he splits the sea by 
storms, as though he would make the bottom of the deep visible, 
and rakes up the sands to the surface of the waters, and marshals 
the waves into mountains and valleys. After that, ‘he smites 
through the proud,” that is, humbles the proud waves, and, by 
allaying the storm, reduceth them to their former level: the power 
of God is visible, as well in rebuking, as in awakening the winds; 
he makes them sensible of his voice, and, according to his pleasure, 
exasperates or calms them. The “striking through the proud” 
here, is not, probably, meant of the destruction of the Egyptian 
army, for some guess that Job died that year,» or about the time of 
the Israelites coming out of Egypt; so that this discourse here, 
being in the time of his affliction, could not point at that which was 
done after his restoration to his temporal prosperity. And now, at 
last, he sums up the power of God, in the chiefest of his works 
above, and the greatest wonder of his works below (ver. 18); “By 
his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the 
erooked serpent,” &c. The greater and lesser lights, sun, moon, and 
stars, the ornaments and furniture of heaven ; and the whale, a pro- 
digious monument of God’s power, often mentioned in Scripture to 
‘ this purpose, and, in particular, in this book of Job (ch. xli.); and 
called by the same name of crooked serpent (Isa. xxvii. 1), where it 
is applied, by way of metaphor, to the king of Assyria or Egypt, or 
all oppressors of the church. Various interpretations there are of 
this crooked serpent: some understanding that constellation in 
heaven which astronomers call the dragon; some that combination 
of weaker stars, which they call the galaxia, which winds about the 
heavens: but it is most probable that Job, drawing near to a con- 
clusion of his discourse, joins the two greatest testimonies of God’s 
power in the world, the highest heavens, and the lowest leviathan, 
which is here called a bar serpent, in regard of his strength and 
hardness, as mighty men are called bars in Scripture (Jer. li. 30); 
“Her bars are broken things.” And in regard of this power of God 
© Coecei, * Drusius in oe. « As the word signifies in the Hebrew. 


ON Pee POWER OF GOD. 9 


in the creation of this creature, it is particularly mentioned in the 
catalogue of God’s works (Gen. i. 21); ‘‘And God created great 
whales ;” all the other creatures being put into one sum, and not 
particularly expressed. And now he makes use of this lecture in 
the text, ‘Lo, these are parts of his ways; but how little a portion 
is heard of him? butthe thunder of his power who can understand?” 
This is but a small landscape of some of his works of power; the 
outsides and extremities of it; more glorious things are within his 
palaces: though those things argue a stupendous power of the Crea- 
tor, in his works of creation and providence, yet they are nothing 
to what may be declared of his power. And what may be declared, 
is nothing to what may be conceived; and what may be conceived, 
is nothing to what is above the conceptions of any creature. These 
are but little crumbs and fragments of that Infinite Power, which 
is, in his nature, like a drop in comparison of the mighty ocean; a 
hiss or whisper in comparison of a mighty voice of thunder.y This, 
which I have spoken, is but like a spark to the fiery region, a few 
lines, by the by, a drop of speech. 

The thunder of his power. Some understand it of thunder literally, 
for material thunder in the air: “The thunder of his power,” that 
is, according to the Hebrew dialect, ‘his powerful thunder.” This 
is not the sense; the nature of thunder in the air doth not so much 
exceed the capacity of human understanding ; it is, therefore, rather 
to be understood metaphorically, “the thunder of his power,” that 
is, the greatness and immensity of his power, manifested in the mag- 
nificent miracles of nature, in the consideration whereof men are as- 
tonished, as if they had heard an unusual clap of thunder. So 
thunder is used (Job xxxix. 25), “The thunder of the captains ;” 
that is, strength and force of the captains of an army: and (ver. 19), 
God, speaking to Job of a horse, saith, “ Hast thou clothed his neck 
with thunder?” that is, strength: and thunder being a mark of the 
power of God, some of the heathen have called God by the name 
of a Thunderer.z As thunder pierceth the lowest places, and alters 
the state of things, so doth the power of God penetrate into all things 
whatsoever; the thunder of his power, that is, the greatness of his 
power; as “the strength of salvation” (Ps. xx. 6), that is, a mighty 
salvation. 

Who can understand? Who is able to count all the monuments 
of his power? How doth this little, which I have spoken of, exceed 
the capacity of our understanding, and is rather the matter of our 
astonishment, than the object of our comprehensive knowledge. 
The power of the greatest potentate, or the mightiest creature, is but 
of small extent: none but have their limits; it may be understood 
how far they can act, in what sphere their activity is bounded: but 
when I have spoken all of Divine power that I can, when you have 
thought all that you can think of it, your souls will prompt you to 


¥ Oecolamp. 

= The ancient Gauls worshipped him under the name of Taranis. The Greeks called 
Jupiter Beovraioc, and Thor; whence our Thursday is derived, signifieth Thunderer, a 
title the Germans gave their God. And Toran, in the British language, signifies thun 
der. Voss. Idolo. lib, ii. eap. 33. Camb. Britan. p. 17. 


10 CHARNOCK ON THE SRE TES. 


conceive something more beyond what I have spoken, and what you 
have thought. His power shines in everything, and is beyond every- 
thing. ‘There is infinitely more power lodged in his ‘nature, not ex- 
pressed to the world. The understanding of men and angels, cen- 
tred in one creature, would fall short of the perception of the 
infiniteness of it. All that can be comprehended of it, are but little 
fringes of it, a small portion. No man ever discoursed, or can, of 
God’s power, according to the magnificence of it. No creature can 
conceive it; God himself only comprehends it; God himself is only 
able to express it. Man’s power being limited, his line is too short 
to measure the incomprehensible omnipotence of God. ‘“ The thun- 
der of his power who can understand?” that is, none can. The text 
is a lofty declaration of the Divine power, with a particular note of 
attention, Zo/ I. In the expressions of it, in the works of creation 
and providence, Lo, these are his ways; ways and works excelling 
any created strength, referring to the little summary of them he had 
made before. II. In the insufficiency of these ways to measure his 
power, But how little a portion is heard of him. Ill. In the incom- 
prehensibleness of it, The thunder of his power, who can understand ? 
Doctrine. Infinite and incomprehensible power pertains to the nature 
of God, and is expressed, in part, in his works; or, though there be 
a mighty expression of Divine power in his works, yet an incompre- 
hensible power pertains to his nature. ‘“ T'he thunder of his power, 
who can understand ?” 

His power glitters in all his works, as well as his wisdom (Ps. 
xii. 11): “‘ Twice have I heard this, that power belongs unto God.” 
In the law and in the prophets, say some; but why power twice, and 
not mercy, which he speaks of in the following verse? he had heard 
of power twice, from the voice of creation, and from the voice of 
government. Mercy was heard in government after man’s fall, not 
creation; mnocent man was an object of God’s goodness, not of his 
mercy, till he made himself miserable; power was expressed in both; 
or, twice have I heard that power belongs to God, that is, it is a cer- 
tain and undoubted truth, that power is essential to the Divine nature. 
It is true, mercy is essential, justice is essential; but power more ap- 
parently essential, because no acts of mercy, or justice, or wisdom, 
can be exercised by him without power; the repetition of a thing 
confirms the certainty of it. Some observe, that God is called Al- 
mighty seventy times in Scripture. Though his power be evident 
in all his works, yet he hath a power beyond the expression of it in 
his works, which, as it is the glory of his nature, so it is the comfort 
of a believer. To which purpose the apostle expresseth it by an ex-, 
cellent paraphrasis for the honor of the Divine nature (Eph. i. 20): 
“Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all 
that we can ask or think, unto him be glory in the churches.” We 
have reason to acknowledge him Almighty, who hath a power of 
acting above our power of understanding. Who could have imag- 
ined such a powerful operation in the propagation of the gospel, and 
the conversion of the Gentiles, which the apostle seems to hint at in 
that place? His power is expressed by “ horns in his hands” (Hab. 


4 Lessius, de Perfect. Divin. lib. v. cap. 1. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. au 


ili. 4); because all the works of his hands are wrought with Almighty 
strength. Power is also used as a name of God (Mark. xiv. 62): 
“The Son of Man sitting on the right hand of power,” that is, at the 
right hand of God; God and power are so inseparable, that they 
are reciprocated. As his essence is immense, not to be confined in 
place; as it is eternal, not to be measured by time; so it is Almighty, 
not to be limited in regard of action. 

1. It is ingenuously illustrated by some by a unit ;> all numbers de- 
pend upon it; it makes numbers by addition, multiplies them unexpres- 
sibly ; when one unit is removed from a number, how vastly doth it 
diminish it! It gives perfection to all other numbers, it receives per- 
fection from none. If you add a unit before 100, how doth it mul- 
tiply it to 1,100! If you set a unit before 20,000,000, it presently 
makes the number swell up to 120,000,000; and so powerful is a 
unit, by adding it to numbers, that it will infinitely enlarge them to 
such a vastness, that shall transcend the capacity of the best arithme- 
tician te count them. By such a meditation as this, you may have 
some prospect of the power of that God who is only unity; the be- 
ginning of all things, as a unit is the beginning of all numbers; and 
can perform as many things really, as a unit can numerically; that 
is, can do as much in the making of creatures, as a unit can do in 
the-multiplying of numbers. The omnipotence of God was scarce 
denied by any heathen that did not deny the being of a God; and 
that was Pliny, and that upon weak arguments. 

2. Indeed we cannot have a conception of God, if we conceive 
him not most powerful, as well as most wise; he is not'a God that 
cannot do what he will, and perform all his pleasure. If we imag- 
“ime him restrained in his power, we imagine him limited in his es- 
sence; as he hath an infinite knowledge to know what is possible, 
he cannot be without an infinite power to do what is possible; as he 
hath a will to resolve what he sees good, so he cannot want a power 
to effect what he sees good to decree; as the essence of a creature 
cannot be conceived without that activity that belongs to his nature; 
as when you conceive fire, you cannot conceive it without a power 
of burning and warming ; and when you conceive water, you cannot 
conceive it without a power of moistening and cleansing: so you 
cannot conceive an infinite essence without an infinite power of ac- 
tivity ; and therefore a heathen could say, “If you know God, you 
know he can do all things ;” and therefore, saith Austin, ‘Give me 
not only a Christian, but a Jew; not only a Jew, but a heathen, that 
will deny God to be Almighty.” A Jew, a heathen, may deny 
Christ to be omnipotent, but no heathen will deny God to be omnip- 
otent, and no devil will deny either to be so: God cannot be con- 
ceived without some power, for then he must be conceived without 
action. Whose, then, are those products and effects of power, which 
are visible to us in the world? to whom do they belong? who is the 
Father of them? God cannot be conceived without a power suitable 
to his nature and essence. If we imagine him to be of an infinite 
essence, we must imagine him to be of an infinite power and 
strength. | 
» Fotherby, Atheomastic, pp. 306, 307. 


12 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


Tn particular, I shall show—I. The nature of God’s power. I. 
Reasons to prove that God must needs be powerful. ILI. How his 
power appears in creation, in government, inredemption. IV. The Use. 

I. What this power is; or the nature of it. 

1. Power sometimes signifies authority : and a man is said to be 
mighty and powerful in regard of his dominion, and the right he 
hath to command multitudes of other persons to take his part; but 
power taken for strength, and power taken for authority, are distinct 
things, and may be separated from one another. Power may be 
without authority; as in successful invasions, that have no just foun- 
dation. Authority may be without power; as in a just prince, ex- 
pelled by an unjust rebellion, the authority resides in him, though 
he be overpowered, and is destitute of strength to support and exer- 
cise that authority. The power of God is not to be understood of 
his authority and dominion, but his strength to act; and the word in 
the text properly signifies strength.¢ 

2. This power is divided ordinarily into absolute and ordinate. 
Absolute, is that power whereby God is able to do that which he 
will not do, but is possible to be done; ordinate, is that power 
whereby God doth that which he hath decreed to do, that is, which 
he hath ordained or appointed to be exercised ;4 which are not dis- 
tinct powers, but one and the same power. His ordinate power is a 
ech of his absolute; for if he had not a power to do every thing that 

e could will, he might not have the power to do everything that he 
doth will. The object of his absolute power is all things possi- 
ble; such things that imply not a contradiction, such that are not 
repugnant in their own nature to be done, and such as are not con- 
trary to the nature and perfections of God tobe done. ‘Those things 
that are repugnant in their own nature to be done are several, as to 
make a thing which is past not to be past. As, for example, the 
world is created; God could have chose whether he would create 
the world, and after it is created he hath power to dissolve it; but 
after it was created, and when it is dissolved, it will be eternally 
true, that the world was created, and that it was dissolved ; for it 1s 
impossible, that that which was once true, should ever be false: if it 
be true that the world was created, it will forever be true that it was 
ereated, and cannot be otherwise. And also, if it be once true that 
God hath decreed, it is impossible in its own nature to be true that 
God hath not decreed. Some things are repugnant to the nature 
and perfections of God; as it is impossible for his nature to die and 
perish; impossible for him, in regard of truth, to lie and deceive. 
But of this hereafter; only at present to understand the object of 
God’s absolute power to be things possible, that is, possible in nature ; 
not by any strength in themselves, or of themselves; for nothing 
hath no strength, and everything is nothing before 1t comes into 
being ;° so God, by his absolute power, might have prevented the 
sin of the fallen angels, and so have preserved them in their first 
habitation. He might, by his absolute power, have restrained the 
devil from tempting of Eve, or restrained her and Adam from swal- 


¢ sniiaa Sept. ofevoc. 4 Scaliger, Publ, Exercit. 365, § 8. 
« Estius in Sent. lib, i. dist, 43. § 2. - 


- ON THE POWER OF GOD. 43 


lowing the bait, and joining hands with the temptation. By his ab- 
‘solute power, God might have given the reins to Peter to betray his 
Master, as well as to deny him; and employed Judas in the same 
glorious and successful service, wherein he employed Paul. By his 
absolute power, he might have created the world millions of years 
before he did create it, and can reduce it into its empty nothing this 
moment. This the Baptist affirms, when he tells us, “ That God is 
able of these stones (meaning the stones in the wilderness, and not 
the people which came out to him out of Judea, which were children 
‘of Abraham) to raise up children to Abraham” (Matt. i. 9); that is, 
there is a possibility of such a thing there is no contradiction in it, 
but that God is able to do it if he please, But now the object of his 
ordinate power, is all things ordained by him to be done, all things 
decreed by him; and because of the Divine ordination of things, 
this power is called ordinate; and what is thus ordained by him he 
cannot but do, because of his unchangeableness. Both those powers 
are expressed (Matt. xxvi. 53, bie “My Father can send twelve 
legions of angels,” there is his absolute power; ‘“ but how then shall 
the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?” there is his ordi- 
nate power. As his power is free from any act of his will, it is called 
absolute ; as it is joined with an act of his will, it is called ordinate. 
His absolute power is necessary, and belongs to his nature; his ordi- 
nate power is free, and belongs to his will;—a power guided by his 
will,—not, as I said before, that they are two distinct powers, both 
belonging to his nature, but the latter is the same with the former, 
only it is guided by his will and wisdom. 

8. It follows, then, that the power of God is that ability and 
strength, whereby he can bring to pass whatsoever he please ; what- 
soever his infinite wisdom can direct, and whatsoever the infinite 
purity of his will can resolve. Power, in the primary notion of it, 
doth not signify an act, but an ability to bring a thing into act; it 
is power, as able to act before it doth actually produce a thing: as 
God had an ability to create before he did create, he had power be- 
fore he acted that power without. Power notes the principle of the 
action, and, therefore, is greater than the act itself. Power exercised 
and diffused, in bringing forth and nursing in its particular objects 
without, is inconceivably less than that strength which is infinite in 
himself, the same with his essence, and is indeed himself: by his 
power exercised he doth whatsoever he actually wills; but by the 
power in his nature, he is able to do whatsoever he is able to will. 
The will of creatures may be, and is more extensive than their 
power; and their power more contracted and shortened than their 
will: but, as the prophet saith, ‘“‘ His counsel shall stand, and he 
will do all his pleasure” (Isa. xlvi. 10). His power is as great as his 
will, that is, whatsoever can fall within the verge of his will, falls 
within the compass of his power. Though he will never actually 
will this or that, yet supposing he should will it, he is able to per- 
form it: so that you must, in your notion of Divine power, enlarge 
it further than to think God can only do what he hath resolved to 
do; but that he hath as infinite a capacity of power to act, as he hath 
an infinite capacity of will to resolve. Besides, this power is of thas 


44 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


nature, that he can do whatsoever he pleases without difficulty, with- 
out resistance ; it cannot be checked, restrained, frustrated.£ As he 
can do all things possible in regard of the object, he can do all things 
easily in regard of the manner of acting: what in human artificers 
is knowledge, labor, industry, that in God is his will; his will works 
without labor; his works stand forth as he wills them. Hands and 
arms are ascribed to him for our conceptions, because our power of 
acting is distinct from our will; but God’s power of acting is not 
really distinct from his will; it is sufficient to the existence of a 
thing that God wills it to exist; he can act what he will only by his 
will, without any instruments. He needs no matter to work upon, 
because he can make something from nothing ; all matter owes itself 
to his creative power: he needs no time to work in, for he can make 
_ time when he pleases to begin to work: he needs no copy to work 
by; himself is his own pattern and copy in his works. All created 
agents want matter to work upon, instruments to work with, copies 
to work by; time to bring either the births of their minds, or the 
works of their hands, to perfection: but the power of God needs 
none of these things, but is of a vast and incomprehensible nature, 
beyond all these. As nothing can be done without the compass of 
it, so itself is without the compass of every created understanding. 

4, This power is of a distinct conception from the wisdom and 
will of God. They are not really distinct, but according to our con- 
ceptions. We cannot discourse of Divine things, without observing 
some proportion of them with human, ascribing unto God the per- 
fections, sifted from the imperfections of our nature. In us there 
are three orders—of understanding, will, power; and, accordingly, 
three acts, counsel, resolution, execution ; which, though they are 
distinct in us, are not really distinct in God. In our conceptions, the 
apprehension of a thing belongs to the understanding of God; de- 
termination, to the will of God; direction, to the wisdom of God; 
execution, to the power of God. The knowledge of God regards a 
thing as possible, and as it may be done; the wisdom of God re- 
gards a thing as fit, and convenient to be done; the will of God re- 
solves that it shall be done; the power of God is the application of 
his will to effect what it hath resolved. Wisdom is a fixing the 
being of things, the measures and perfections of their several beings ; 
power is a conferring those perfections and beings upon them. His 
power is his ability to act, and his wisdom is the director of his ac- 
tion: his will orders, his wisdom guides, and his power effects. His 
will as the spring, and his power as the worker, are expressed (Ps. 
exy. 8). ‘He hath done whatsoever he pleased. He commanded, 
and they were created” (Ps. cxl. 5); and all three expressed (Eph. i. 
11), ‘“‘ Who works all things according to the counsel of his own 
will:” so that the power of God is a perfection, as it were, subor- 
dinate to his understanding and will, to execute the results of his 
wisdom, and the orders of his will; to his wisdom as directing, be- 
cause he works skilfully ; to his will as moving and applying, be- 
cause he works voluntarily and freely. The exercise of his power 
depends upon his will: his will is the supreme cause of everything 

€ Cra. Syntag. lib. iii. cap. 17. p. 611. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. “15 


that stands up in time, and all things receive a being as he wills 
them. His power is but will perpetually working, and diffusing it- 
self in the season his will Hash fixed from eternity; it is his eternal 
will in perpetual and successive springs and streams in the creatures; 
it is nothing else but the constant efficacy of his omnipotent will. 
This must be understood of his ordinate power; but his absolute 
power is larger than his resolving will: for though the Scripture 
tells us, “ He hath done whatsoever he will,” yet it tells us not, that 
he hath done whatsoever he could: he can do things that he will 
never do. Again, his power is distinguished from his will in regard 
of the exercise of it, which is after the act of his will: his will was 
conversant about objects, when his power was not exercised about 
them. Creatures were the objects of his will from eternity, but they 
were not from eternity the effects of his power. His purpose to 
create was from eternity, but the execution of his purpose was in 
time. Now this execution of his will we call his ordinate power: 
his wisdom and his will are supposed antecedent to his power, as the 
counsel and resolve; as the cause precedes the performance of the 
purpose as the effect. Somes distinguish his power from his under- 
standing and will, in regard that his understanding and will are 
larger than his absolute power; for God understands sins, and wills 
to permit them, but he cannot himself do any evil or unjust action, 
nor have a power of doing it. But this is not to distinguish that 
Divine power, but impotence; for to be unable to do evil is the per- 
fection of power; and to be able to do things unjust and evil, is a 
weakness, imperfection, and inability. Man indeed wills many things 
that he is not able to perform, and understands many things that he 
is not able to effect; he understands much of the creatures, some- 
thing of sun, moon, and stars; he can conceive many suns, many 
moons, yet is not able to create the least atom: but there is nothing 
that belongs to power but God understands, and is able to effect. To 
sum this up, the will of God is the root of all, the wisdom of God 
is the copy of all, and the power of God is the framer of all. 

5. The power of God gives activity to all the other perfections 
of his nature, and is of a larger extent and efficacy, in regard 
of its objects, than some perfections of his nature. I put them both 
together. 

(1.) It contributes life and activity to all the other perfections of 
his nature. How vain would be his eternal counsels, if power did 
not step in to execute them! His mercy would be a feeble pity, if 
le were destitute of power to relieve; and his justice a slighted 
scarecrow, without power to punish; his promises an empty sound, 
without power to accomplish them. As holiness is the beauty, so 
power is the life of all his attributes in their exercise; and as holi- 
ness, SO power, is an adjunct belonging to all, a term that may be 
given to all. God hath a powerful wisdom to attain his ends with- 
out interruption: he hath a powerful mercy to remove our misery ; 
a powerful justice to lay all misery upon offenders: he hath a pow- 
erful truth to perform his promises; an infinite power to bestow re- 
wards, and inflict penalties. It is to this purpose power is first put 


€ Gamacheus. 


Cs) CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


in the two things which the Psalmist had heard (Ps. Ixn, 11, 12). 
“Twice have I heard,” or two things have [heard first power, then 
mercy and justice, included in that expression, ‘‘ Thou renderest to 
every man according to his work:” in every perfection of God he 
heard of power. This is the arm, the hand of the Deity, which all 
his other attributes lay hold on, when they would appear in their 
glory; this hands them to the world: by this they act, in this they 
triumph. Power framed every stage for their appearance in crea- 
tion, providence, redemption. 

(2.) It is of a larger extent, in regard of its objects, than some 
other attributes. Power doth not alway suppose an object, but con- 
stitutes an object. It supposeth an object in the act of preservation, 
but it makes an object in the act of creation; but mercy supposeth 
an object miserable, yet doth not make itso. Justice supposeth an 
object criminal, but doth not constitute it so: mercy snpposeth him 
miserable, to relieve him; justice supposeth him criminal, to punish 
him: but power supposeth not a thing in real existence, but as pos- 
sible; or rather, it 1s from power that any thing hath a possibility, 
if there be no repugnancy in the nature of the thing. Again, power 
extends further than either mercy or justice. Mercy hath particu- 
lar objects, which justice shall not at last be willing to punish ; and 
justice hath particular objects, which mercy at last shall not be will- 
ing to refresh: but power doth, and alway will, extend to the ob- 
jects of both mercy and justice. A creature, as a creature, is 
neither the object of mercy nor justice, nor of rewarding goodness: 
a creature, as innocent, is the object of rewarding goodness; a crea- 
ture, as miserable, is the object of compassionate mercy ; a creature, 
as criminal, is the object of revenging justice: but all of them the 
objects of power, in conjunction with those attributes of goodness, 
mercy, and justice, to which they belong. All the objects that 
-merey, and justice, and truth, and wisdom, exercise themselves 
_ about, hath a possibility and an actual being from this perfection of 
Divine power. Itis power first frames a creature in a capacity of 
nature for mercy or justice, though it doth not give an immediate 
qualification for the exercise of either. Power makes man a ra- 
tional creature, and so confers upon him a nature mutable, which 
may be miserable by its own fault, and punishable by God's justice; 
or pitiable by God’s compassion, and relievable by God’s mercy : 
but it doth not make him sinful, whereby he becomes miserable and 
punishable. Again, power runs through all the degrees of the 
states of a creature. Asa thing is possible, or may be made, it is 
the object of absolute power; as it is factibile, or ordered to be 
made, it is the object of ordinate power: as a thing is actually made, 
and brought into being, it is the object of preserving power. So 
that power doth stretch out its arms to all the works of God, in all 
their circumstances, and at all times. When mercy ceaseth to relieve 
a creature, when justice ceaseth to punish a creature, power ceaseth 
not to preserve a creature. The blessed in heaven, that are out of 
the reach of punishing justice, are forever maintained by power in 
- that blessed condition: the damned in hell, that are cast out of the 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 17 


bosom of entreating mercy, are forever sustained in those remediless 
torments by the Arm of Power. | 

6. This power is originally and essentially in the nature of God, 
and not distinct from his essence. It is originally and essentially in 
God. The strength and power of great kings is originally in their 
people, and managed and ordered by the authority of the prince for 
the common good. Though a prince hath authority in his person to 
command, yet he hath not sufficient strength in his person, without 
the assistance of others, to make his commands to be obeyed. He 
hath not a single strength in his own person to conquer countries 
and kingdoms, and increase the number of his subjects: he must 
make use of the arms of his own subjects, to overrun other places, 
and yoke them under his dominion: but the power of all things 
that ever were, are, or shall be, is originally and essentially in God. 
Tt is not derived from any thing without him, as the power of the 
greatest potentates in the world is: therefore (Ps. lxi. 11) it is said, 
“Power belongs unto God,” that is, solely and to none else. He 
hath a power to make his subjects, and as many as he pleases; to 
ereate worlds, to enjoin precepts, to execute penalties, without call- 
ing in the strength of his creatures to his aid. The strength that 
the subjects of a mortal prince have, is not derived to them from 
the prince, though the exercise of it for this or that end, is ordered 
and directed by the authority of the prince: but what strength so- 
ever any thing hath to act as a means, it hath from the power of 
God as Creator, as well as whatsoever authority it hath to act is from 
God, as a Rector and Governor of the world. God hath a strength 
to act without means, and no means can act any thing without his 
power and strength communicated to them. As the clouds, in ver. 
8, before the text, are called God’s clouds, “his clouds:” so all the 
strength of creatures may be called, and truly is, God’s strength and 
power in them: a dtop of power shot down from heaven, originally 
only in God. Creatures have but a little mite of power; somewhat 
communicated to them, somewhat kept and reserved from them, of 
what they are capable to possess. They have limited natures, and 
therefore a limited sphere of activity. Clothes can warm us, but 
not feed us; bread can nourish us, but not clothe us. One plant 
hath a medicinal quality against one disease, another against an- 
other; but God is the possessor of universal power, the common 
exchequer of this mighty treasure. He acts by creatures, as not 
needing their power, but deriving power to them: what he acts by 
them, he could act himself without them: and what they act as 
from themselves, is derived to them from him through invisible chan- 
nels. And hence it will follow, that because power is essentially in 
God, more operations of God are possible than are exerted. And 
as power is essentially in God, so it is not distinct from his essence. 
Tt belongs to God in regard of the inconceivable excellency and 
activity of his essence.» And omnipotent is nothing but the Divine 
essence efficacious ad extra. It is his essence as operative, and the 
immediate principle of operation: as the power of enlightening in 
the sun, and the power of heating in the fire, are not things distinct 


» Ratione summez actualitatis essentize. Suarez, Vol, I. pp. 150, 151. 
VOL. 11.—2 


18 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


from the nature of them; but the nature of the sun bringing forth 
light, and the nature of the fire bringeth forth heat. The power of 
acting is the same with the substance of God, though the action 
from that power be terminated in the creature. If the power of 
God were distinct from his essence, he were then compounded of 
substance and power, and would not be the most simple being. As 
when the understanding is informed in several parts of knowledge, 
it is skilled in the government of cities and countries, it knows this 
or that art: it learns mathematics, philosophy; this, or that science. 
The understanding hath a power to do this; but this power, where- 
by it learns those excellent things, and brings forth excellent births, 
is not a thing distinct from the understanding itself; we may rather 
eall it the understanding powerful, than the power of the under- 
standing; and so we may rather say, God powerful, than say, the 
power of God; because his power is not distinct from his essence. 
From both these, it will follow, that this omnipotence is incommuni- 
eable to any creature. no creature can inherit it, because it is a con- 
tradiction for any creature to have the essence of God. This om- 
nipotence is a peculiar right of God, wherein no creature can share 
with him. To be omnipotent is to be essentially God. And for a 
creature to be omnipotent, is for a creature to be its own Creator. 
It being therefore the same with the essence of the Godhead, it can- 
not be communicated to the humanity of Christ, as the Lutherans 
say it is, without the communication of the essence of the God- 
head; for then the humanity of Christ would not be humanity, but 
Deity. If omnipotence were communicated to the humanity of 
Christ, the essence of God were also communicated to his humanity, 
and then eternity would be communicated. His humanity then was 
not given him in time; his humanity would be uncompounded, that 
is, his body would be no body, his soul no soul. Omnipotence is 
essentially in God; it is not distinct from the essence of God, it is 
his essence, omnipotent, able to do all things. 

7. Hence it follows, that this power is infinite (Hph. 1. 19); 
“What is the exceeding greatness of his power,” &c. “according to 
the working of his mighty power.” God were not omnipotent, un- 
less his power were infinite; for a finite power is a limited power, 
and a limited power cannot effect everything that is possible. 
Nothing can be too difficult for the Divine power to effect; he hath 
a fullness of power, an exceeding strength, above all human capa- 
cities; it is a “mighty power” (Hph.i. 19), “able to do above all that 
we can ask or think” (Hph. iii. 20): that which he acts, is above the 
power of any creature to act. Infinite power consists in the bring- 
ing things forth from nothing. No creature can imitate God in this 
prerogative of power. Man indeed can carve various forms, and 
erect various pieces of art, but from pre-existent matter. Hvery 
artificer hath the matter brought to his hand, he only brings it forth 
in a new figure. Chemists separate one thing from another, but 
create nothing, but sever those things which were before compacted 
and crudled together: but when God speaks a powerful word, 
nothing begins to be something: things stand forth from the womb 
of nothing, and obey his mighty command, and take what forms he 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 19 


is pleased to give them. The creating one thing, though never so 
gmall and minute, as the least fly, cannot be but by an infinite 
power; much less can the producing of such variety we see in the 
world. His power is infinite, in regard it cannot be resisted by 
anything that he hath made; nor can it be confined by anything 
he can will to make. ‘‘ His greatness is unsearchable” (Ps. exlv. 3). 
It is a greatness, not of quantity, but quality. The greatness o! 
his power hath no end: it is a vanity to imagine any limits can b. 
affixed to it, or that any creature can say, “ Hitherto it can go, anc 
no further.” It is above all conception, all inquisition of any 
created understanding. No creature ever had, nor ever can have, 
that strength of wit and understanding, to conceive the extent of 
his power, and how magnificently he can work. 

First, His essence is infinite. As in a finite subject there is a 
finite virtue, so in an infinite subject there must be an infinite virtue. 
Where the essence is limited, the power is so:i where the essence is 
unlimited, the power knows no bounds.« Among creatures, the 
more excellency of being and form anything hath, the more activity, 
vigor, and power it hath, to work according to its nature. The sun 
hath a mighty power to warm, enlighten, and fructify, above what 
the stars have; because it hath a vaster body, more intense degrees 
of light, heat, and vigor. Now, if you conceive the sun made 
much greater than it is, it would proportionably have greater de- 
grees of power to heat and enlighten than it hath now: and were 
it possible to have an infinite heat and light, it would infinitely heat 
and enlighten other things; for everything is able to act according 
to the measures of its being: therefore, since the essence of God is 
‘unquestionably infinite, his power of acting must be so also. His 
power (as was said before) is one and the same with his essence: 
and though the knowledge of God extends to more objects than 
his power, because he knows all evils of sin, which because of his 
holiness he cannot commit, yet it is as infinite as his knowledge, 
because it is as much one with his essence, as his knowledge and 
wisdom is: for as the wisdom or knowledge of God is nothing but 
the essence of God, knowing, so the power of God is nothing but the 
essence of God, able. 

The objects of Divine power are innumerable. The objects of 
Divine power are not essentially infinite; and therefore we must 
not measure the infiniteness of Divine power by an ability to make 
an infinite being; because there is an incapacity in any created 
thing to be infinite; for to be a creature and to be infinite; to be 
infinite and yet made, is a contradiction. To be infinite, and to be 
God, is one and the same thing. Nothing can be infinite but God; 
nothing but God is infinite. But the power of God is infinite, be- 
cause it can produce infinite effects, or innumerable things, such as 
surpass the arithmetic of a creature; nor yet doth the infiniteness 
consist simply in producing innumerable effects; for that a finite 
cause can produce. Fire can, by its finite and limited heat, burn 
numberless combustible things and parcels; and the understanding 
of man hath an infinite number of thoughts and acts of intellection, 

(}) Ov -wationes sequuntur essentiam. (K) Aquin. Part 1 Qu 25. Artice. 


2.0 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


and thoughts different from one another. Who can number the 
imaginations of his fancy, and thoughts of his mind, the space of 
one month or year? much less of forty or an hundred years; yet all 
these thoughts are about things that are in being, or have a founda- 
tion in things that are in being. But the infiniteness of God’s power 
consists in an ability to produce infinite effects, formally distinct, 
and diverse from one another; such as never had being, such as the 
mind of man cannot conceive: “ Able to do above what we can 
think” (Eph. iii. 20). And whatsoever God hath made, or is able to 
make, he is able to make in an infinite manner, by calling them to 
stand forth from nothing. To produce innumerable effects of dis- 
tinct natures, and from so distant a term as nothing, is an argument 
of infinite power. Now, that the objects of Divine power are in- 
numerable, appears, because God can do infinitely more than he 
hath done, or will do. Nothing that God hath done can enfeeble 
or dull his power; there still resides in him an ability beyond all 
the settled contrivances of his understanding and resolves of his 
will, which no effects which he hath wrought can drain and put to 
a stand. As he can raise stones to be children to Abraham (Matt. 
iii. 9); so with the same mighty word, whereby he made one world, 
he can make infinite numbers of worlds to be the monuments of 
his glory. After the prophet Jeremiah (ch. xxxii. 17), had spoke of 
God’s power in creation, he adds, “ And there is nothing too hard for 
thee.” For one world that he hath made, he can create millions: 
for one star which he hath beautified the heavens with, he could 
have garnished it with a thousand, and multiplied, if he had 
pleased, every one of those into millions, “for he can eall things that 
are not” (Rom. iv. 17); not some things, but all things possible. The 
barren womb of nothing can no more resist his power now to educe 
a world from it, than it could at first: no doubt, but for one angel 
which he hath made, he could make many worlds of angels. He 
that made one with so much ease, as by a word, cannot want power 
to make many more, till he wants a word. ‘The word that was not 
too weak to make one, cannot be too weak to make multitudes. If 
from one man he hath, ina way of nature, multiplied so many in all 
ages of the world, and covered with them the whole face of the 
earth; he could, in a supernatural way, by one word, multiply as 
many more. “It is the breath of the Almighty that gives life” (Job. 
xxxi. 4). He can create infinite species and kinds of creatures 
more than he hath created, more variety of forms: for since there 
is no searching of his greatness, there is no conceiving the number- 
less possible effects of his power. The understanding of man can 
conceive numberless things possible to be, more than have been or 
shall be. And shall we imagine, that a finite understanding of a 
creature hath a greater omnipotency to conceive things possible, 
than God hath to produce things possible? When the understand- 
ing of man is tired in its conceptions, it must still be concluded, 
that the power of God extends, not only to what can be conceived, 
but infinitely beyond the measures of a finite faculty. ‘ Touching 
the Almighty, we cannot find’ him out; he is excellent in power 
and in judgment” (Job xxxvi. 23). or the understanding of man, 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 21 


in its conceptions of more kind of creatures, is limited to those 
creatures which are: it cannot, in its own imagination, conceive 
anything but what hath some foundation in and from something 
already in being. It may frame a new kind of creature, made up 
of a lion, a horse, an ox; but all those parts whereof its conception 
is made, have distinct beings in the world, though not in that com- 
position as his mind mixes and joins them; but no question but 
God can create creatures that have no resemblance with any kind 
of creatures yet in being. It is certain that if God only knows 
those things which he hath done, and will do, and not all things 
possible to be done by him, his knowledge were finite; so if he 
could do no more than what he hath done, his power would be 
finite. 

(1.) Creatures have a power to act about more objects than they 
do. The understanding of man can frame from one principle of 
truth, many conclusions and inferences more than it doth. Why 
cannot, then, the power of God frame from one first matter, an infi- 
nite number of creatures more than have been created? The 
Almightiness of God in producing real effects, is not inferior to the 
- understanding of man in drawing out real truths. An artificer that 
makes a watch, supposing his life and health, can make many more 
of a different form and motion; and a limner can draw many 
draughts, and frame many pictures with a new variety of colors, ac- 
cording to the richness of his fancy. If these can do so, that require 
a’ pre-existent matter framed to their hands, God can much more, 
who can raise beautiful structures from nothing. As long as men 
have matter, they can diversify the matter, and make new figures 
from it; so long as there is nothing, God can produce out of that 
nothing whatsoever he pleases. Wesee the same in inanimate crea- 
tures. A spark of fire hath a vast power in it: it will kindle other 
things, increase and enlarge itself; nothing can be exempt from the 
active force of it. It will alter, by consuming or refining, whatso- 
ever you offer to it. It will reach all, and refuse none; and by the 
efficacious power of it, all those new figures which we see in metals, 
are brought forth; when you have exposed to it a multitude of 
things, still add more, it will exert the same strength ; yea, the vigor 
is increased rather than diminished. The more it catcheth, the more 
fiercely and irresistibly it will act; you cannot suppose an end of its 
operation, or a decrease of its strength, as long as you can conceive 
its duration and continuance: this must be but a weak shadow of 
that infinite power which is in God. ‘Take another instance, in the 
sun: it hath power every year to produce flowers and plants from 
the earth; and is as able to produce them now, as it was at the first 
lighting it and rearing it in that sphere wherein it moves. And if 
there were no kind of flowers and plants now created, the sun hath 
a power residing in it, ever since its first creation, to afford the same 
warmth to them for the nourishing and bringing them forth. W hat- 
soever you can conceive the sun to be able to do in regard of plants, 
that can God do in regard of worlds; produce more worlds than the 
sun doth plants every year, without weariness, without languishment. 
The sun is able to influence more things than it doth, and produce 


22 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


numberless effects; but it doth not do so much as it is able to do, 
because it wants matter to work upon. God, therefore, who wants 
no matter, can do much more than he doth; he can either act by 
second causes if there were more, or make more second causes if he 
pleased. 

(2.) God is the most free agent. very free agent can do more 
than he will do. Man being a free creature, can do more than ordi- 
narily he doth will to do. God is most free, as being the spring of 
liberty in other creatures; he acts not by a necessity of nature, as 
the waves of the sea, or the motions of the wind; and, therefore, is 
not determined to those things which he hath already called forth 
into the world. If God be infinitely wise in contrivance, he could 
contrive more than he hath, and therefore, can effect more than he 
hath effected. He doth not act to the extent of his power upon all 
occasions. It is according to his will that he works (Hph.i.). It is 
not according to his work that he wills; his work is an evidence of 
his will, but not the rule of his will. His power is not the rule of 
his will, but his willis the disposer of his power, according to the 
light of his infinite wisdom, and other attributes that direct his will; 
and therefore his power is not to be measured by his actual will. 
No doubt, but he could ina moment have produced that world which 
he took six days’ time to frame; he could have drowned the old 
world at once, without prolonging the time till the revolution of 
forty days; he was not limited to such a term of time by any weak- 
ness, but by the determination of his own will. God doth not do 
the hundred thousandth part of what he is able to do, but what is 
convenient to do, according to the end which he hath proposed to 
himself. Jesus Christ, as man, could have asked legions of angels ; 
and God, as a sovereign, could have sent them (Matt. xxvi. 58). 
God could raise the dead every day if he pleased, but he doth not: 
he could heal every diseased person in a moment, but he doth not. 
As God can will more than he doth actually will, so he can do more 
than he hath actually done; he can do whatsoever he can will; he 
can will more worlds, and therefore can create more worlds. If God 
hath not ability to do more than he will do, he then can do no more 
than what he actually hath done; and then it will follow, that he is 
not a free, but a natural and necessary agent, which cannot be sup- 
posed of God. 

Second. This power is infinite in regard of action. As he can 
produce numberless objects above what he hath produced, so he 
could produce them more magnificently than he hath made them. 
As he never works to the extent of his power in regard of things, so 
neither in regard of the manner of acting; for he never acts so but: 
he could act in a higher and perfecter manner. 

(1.) His power is infinite in regard of the independency of action: 
he wants no instrument to act. When there was nothing but God, 
there was no cause of action but God; when there was nothing im 
being but God, there could be no instrumental cause of the being of 
anything. God can perfect his action without dependence on any 
thing ;! and to be simply independent, is to be simply imfinite. In 

? Suarez, Vol. I, de Deo. p. 151- 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 23 


this respect it is a power incommunicable to any creature, though 
you conceive a creature in higher degrees of perfection than it is. A 
sreature cannot cease to be dependent, but it must cease to be a crea- 
ture; to be acreature and independent, are terms repugnant to one 
another. 

(2.) But the infiniteness of Divine power consists in an ability to 
give higher degrees of perfection to everything which he hath made. 
As his power is infinite extensive, in regard of the multitude of ob- 
jects he can bring into being, so it is infinite intensive, in regard of 
the manner of operation, and the endowments he can bestow upon 
them. Some things, indeed, God doth so perfect, that higher de- 
grees of perfection cannot be imagined to be added to them." As 
the humanity of Christ cannot be united more gloriously than to the 
person of the Son of God, a greater degree of perfection cannot be 
conferred upon it. Nor can the souls of the blessed have a nobler 
object of vision and fruition than God himself, the infinite Being; no 
higher than the enjoyment of himself can be conferred upon a crea- 
ture, respect termine. This is not want of power; he cannot be 
greater, because he is greatest; not better, because he is best; 
nothing can be more than infinite. But as to the things which God 
hath made in the world, he could have given them other manner of 
being than they have, A human understanding may improve a 
thought or conclusion; strengthen it with more and more force of 
reason; and adorn it with richer and richer elegancy of language: 
why, then, may not the Divine providence produce a world more 
perfect and excellent than this? He that makes a plain vessel, can 
embellish it more, engrave more figures upon it, according to the 
capacity of the subject: and cannot God do so much more with his 
works? Could not God have made this world of a larger quantity, 
and the sun of a greater bulk and proportionable strength, to influ- 
ence a bigger world? so that this world would have been to another 
that God might have made, as a ball or a mount, this sun as a star 
to another sun that he might have kindled. He could have made 
every star a sun, every spire of grass a star, every grain of dust a 
flower, every soul an angel. And though the angels be perfect 
creatures, and inexpressibly more glorious than a visible creature, 
yet who can imagine God so confined, that he cannot create a more 
excellent kind, and endow those which he hath made with excellen- 
ey of a higher rank than he invested them with at the first moment 
of their creation? Without question God might have given the 
meaner creatures more excellent endowments, put them into another 
order of nature for their own good and more diffusive usefulness in 
the world. What is made use of by the prophet (Mal. i. 15) in an- 
other case, may be used in this: “ Yet had he a residue of Spirit.” 
The capacity of every creature might have been enlarged by God; 
for no work of his in the world doth equal his power, as nothing 
that he hath framed doth equal his wisdom. Thesame matter which 
is the matter of the body of a beast, is the matter of a plant and 
flower; is the matter of the body of a man; and so was capable of 
a higher form and higher perfections, than God hath been pleased 

m Beean. Sum. Theol. p. 82- a Jbid. p. 84. 


24 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


to bestow upon it. And he had power to bestow that perfection on 
one part of matter which he denied to it, and bestowed on another 
part. If God cannot make things in a greater perfection, there 
must be some limitation of him: he cannot be limited by another, 
because nothing is superior to God. If limited by himself, that limi- 
tion is not from a want of power, but a want of will. He can, by 
his own power, raise stones to be children to Abraham (Matt. iu. 9): 
he could alter the nature of the stones, form them into human 
bodies, dignify them with rational souls, inspire those souls with such 
graces that may render them the children of Abraham, But for the 
more fully understanding the nature of this power, we may observe, 

[1.] That though God can make everything with a higher degree 
of perfection, yet still within the limits of a finite being. No crea- 
‘ture can be made infinite, because no creature can be made God. 
No creature can be so improved as to equal the goodness and per- 
fection of God;° yet there is no creature but we may conceive a 
possibility of its being made more perfect in that rank of a creature 
than it is: as we may imagine a flower or plant to have greater 
beauty and richer qualities imparted to it by Divine power, without 
rearing it so high as to the dignity of a rational or sensitive creature. 
Whatsoever perfections may be added by God to a creature, are still 
finite perfections; and a multitude of finite excellences can never 
amount to the value and honor of infinite: as if you add one number 
to another as high as you can, as much as a large piece of paper can 
contain, you can never make the numbers really infinite, though 
they may be infinite in regard of the inability of any human under- 
standing to count them. The finite condition of the creature suffers 
it not to be capable of an infinite perfection. God is so great, so 
excellent, that it is his perfection not to have any equal; the defect 
_ is in the creature, which cannot be elevated to such a pitch; as you 
can never make a gallon measure to hold the quantity of a butt, or 
-a butt the quantity of a river, or a river the fulness of the sea. 

[2.] Though God hath a power to furnish every creature with 
greater and nobler perfections than he hath bestowed upon it, yet 
he hath framed all things in the perfectest manner, and most con- 
venient to that end for which he intended them. Everything is 
endowed with the best nature and quality suitable to God’s end in 
creation, though not in the best manner for itself.p In regard of the 
universal end, there cannot be a better; for God himself is the end 
of all things, who is the Supreme Goodness. Nothing can be better 
than God, who could not be God if he were not superlatively best, 
or optimus ; and he hath ordered all things for the declaration of his 
goodness or justice, according to the behaviors of his creatures. Man 
doth not consider what strength or power he can put forth in the 
means he useth to attain such an end, but the suitableness of them 
to his main design, and so fits and marshals them to his grand pur- 
pose. Had God only created things that are most excellent, he had 
created only angels and men; how, then, would his wisdom have 


° Gamach in Aquin. Tom. I. Qu. 25. 
P Best, ea parte facientis et modi: but not ex parte rei. Esti. in Senten, lib. i, dis- 


tin. 44. § 2. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. yA5) 


been conspicuous in other works in the subordination and subser- 
viency of them to one another? God therefore determined his power 
by his wisdom: and though his absolute power could have made 
every creature better, yet his ordinate power, which in every step 
was regulated by his wisdom, made everything best for his designed 
intention.1 A musician hath a power to wind up a string on a lute 
toa higher and more perfect note in itself, but in wisdom he will not 
do it, because the intended melody would be disturbed thereby if it 
were not suited to the other strings on the instrument; a discord 
would mar and taint the harmony which the lutenist designed. God, 
in creation, observed the proportions of nature: he can make a 
spider as strong asa lion; but according to the order of nature which 
he hath settled, it is not convenient that a creature of so small a 
compass should be as strong as one of a greater bulk. The absolute 

ower of God could have prepared a body for Christ as glorious as 
that he had after his resurrection; but that had not been agreeable 
to the end designed in his humiliation: and, therefore, God acted 
most perfectly by his ordinate power, in giving him a body that 
wore the livery of our infirmities. God’s power is alway regulated 
by his wisdom and will; and though it produceth not what is most 
perfect in itself, yet what is most perfect and decent in relation to 
the end he fixed. And so in his providence, though he could rack 
the whole frame of nature to bring about his ends in a more mirac- 
ulous way and astonishment to mortals, yet his power is usually and 
ordinarily confined by his will to act in concurrence with the nature 
of the creatures, and direct them according to the laws of their being, 
to such ends which he aims at in their conduct, without violencing 
their nature. 

[3.] Though God hath an absolute power to make more worlds, 
and infinite numbers of other creatures, and to render every creature 
a higher mark of his power, yet in regard of his decree to the con- 
trary, he cannot do it. He hath a physical power, but after his re- 
solve to the contrary, not a moral power: the exercise of his power 
is subordinate to his decree, but not the essence of his power. The 
decree of God takes not away any power from God, because the 
power of God is his own essence, and incapable of change; and is 
as great physically and essentially after his decree, as it was before; 
only his will hath put in a bar to the demonstration of all that power 
which he is able to exercise." As a prince that can raise 100,000 
men for an invasion, raises only 20 or 30,000; he here, by his order, 
limits his power, but doth not divest himself of his authority and 
power to raise the whole number of the forces of his dominions if he 
pleases: the power of God hath more objects than his decree hath ; 
but since it is his perfection to be immutable, and not to change his 
decree, he cannot morally put forth his power upon all those objects, 
which, as it is essentially in him, hé hath ability to do. God hath 
decreed to save those that believe in Christ, and to judge unbelievers 
to everlasting perdition: he cannot morally damn the first, or save 
the latter; yet he hath not divested himself of his absolute power te 


4 Aquin. Part I, Qu, 25, art 6. © Gamach in Aguin. Tom. I. Qu. 25. 


~ 


\ 


26 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


save all or damn all.s Or suppose God hath decreed not to create 
more worlds than this we are now in, doth his decree weaken his 
strength to create more if he pleased? His not creating more is not 
a want of strength, but a want of will: it is an act of liberty, not an 
act of impotency. As when a man solemnly resolves not to walk in 
such a way, or come at such a place, his resolution deprives him not 
of his natural strength to walk thither, but fortifies his will against 
using his strength in any such motion to that place. ‘The will of 
God hath set bounds to the exercise of his power, but doth not in- 
fringe that absolute power which still resides in his nature: he is 
girded about with more power than he puts forth (Ps. Ixv. 6). 

[4.] As the power of God is infinite in regard of his essence, in 
regard of the objects, in regard of action, so, fourthly, in regard of 
duration. The apostle calls it ‘an eternal power” (Rom. 1. 20). His 
eternal power is collected and concluded from the things that are 
made: they must needs be the products of some Being which con- 
tains truly in itself all power, who wrought them without engines, 
without instruments; and, therefore, this power must be infinite, and 
possessed of an unalterable virtue of acting. If it be eternal, it must 
be infinite, and hath neither beginning nor end; what is eternal hath 
no bounds. If it be eternal, and not limited by time, it must be 
infinite, and not to be restrained by any finite object: his power 
never begun to be, nor ever ceaseth to be; it cannot languish; men 
are fain to unbend themselves, and must have some time to recruit 
their tired spirits: but the power of God is perpetually vigorous, 
without any interrupting qualm (Isa. x]. 28): ‘‘ Hast thou not known, 
hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator 
of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary?” That might 
which suffered no diminution from eternity, but hatched so great a 
world by brooding upon nothing, will not suffer any dimness or de- 
crease to eternity. "This power being the same with his essence, is 
as durable as his essence, and resides for ever in his nature. 

8. The eighth consideration, for the right understanding of this 
attribute, the impossibility of God’s doing some things, is no in- 
fringing of his almightiness, but rather a strengthening of it. It is 
granted that some things God cannot do; or, rather, as Aquinas and 
others, it is better to say, such things cannot be done, than to say 
that God cannot do them; to remove all kind of imputation or re- 
flection of weakness on God,t and because the reason of the impos- 
sibility of those things is in the nature of the things themselves. 

1. Some things are impossible in their own nature. Such are all 
those things which imply a contradiction; as for a thing to be, and 
not to be at the same time; for the sun to shine, and not to shine at 
the same moment of time; for a creature to act, and not to act at the 
same instant: one of those parts must be false; for if it be true that 
the sun shines this moment, it must be false to say it doth not shine. 
So it is impossible that a rational creature can be without reason: 
‘Tis a contradiction to be a rational creature, and yet want that 
which is essential to a rational creature. So it is impossible that the 
will of man can be compelled, because liberty is the essence of the 

® Crell. de Deo. cap. 22. * Robins. Observ. p. 14. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 27 
will; while it is will it cannot be constrained ; and if it be constrained, 
1t ceaseth to be will. God cannot at one time act as the author of 
the will and the destroyer of the will." It is impossible that vice 
and virtue, light and darkness, life and death, should be the same 
thing. Those things admit not of a conception im any understand- 
ing. Some things are impossible to be done, because of the incapa- 
bility of the subject; as for a creature to be made infinite, indepen- 
dent, to preserve itself without the Divine concourse and assistance. 
So a brute cannot be taken into communion with God, and to ever- 
lasting spiritual blessedness, because the nature of a brute is incapa- 
ble of such an elevation: a rational creature only can understand 
and relish spiritual delights, and is capable to enjoy God, and have 
communion with him. Indeed, God may change the nature of a 
brute, and bestow such faculties of understanding and will upon it, 
as to render it capable of such a blessedness; but then it is no more 
a brute, but a rational creature: but, while it remains a brute, the 
excellency of the nature of God doth not admit of communion with 
such a subject; so that this is not for want of power in God, but be- 
cause of a deficiency in the creature: to suppose that God could make 
a contradiction true, is to make himself false, and to do just nothing. 

2. Some things are impossible to the nature and being of God. 
As to die, implies a flat repugnance to the nature of God; to be able 
to die, is to be able to be cashiered out of being. If God were able 
to deprive himself of life, he might then cease to be: he were not 
then a necessary, but an uncertain, contingent being, and could not 
be said only to have immortality, as he is (1 Tim. vi. 16). He can- 
not die who is life itself, and necessarily existent; he cannot grow 
old or decay, because he cannot be measured by time: and this is 
no part of weakness, but the perfection of power. His power is 
that whereby he remains forever fixed in his own everlasting being. 
That cannot be reckoned as necessary to the omnipotence of God 
which all mankind count a part of weakness in themselves: God is 
omnipotent, because he is not impotent; and if he could die, he 
would be impotent, not omnipotent: death is the feebleness of na- 
ture. It is undoubtedly the greatest impotence to cease to be: who 
would count it a part of omnipotency to disenable himself, and sink 
into nothing and not being? ‘The impossibility for God to die is 
not a fit article to impeach his omnipotence; this would be a strange 
way of arguing: a thing is not powerful, because it is not feeble, 
and cannot cease to be powerful, for death is a cessation of all 
power. God is almighty in doing what he will, not in suffering 
what he will not.x To die is not an active, but a passive power; a 
defect of a power: God is of too noble a nature to perish. Some 
things are impossible to that eminency of nature which he hath 
above all creatures; as to walk, sleep, feed, these are imperfections 
belonging to bodies and compounded natures. If he could walk, he 
were not everywhere present: motion speaks succession. If he 
could increase, he would not have been perfect before. 

3. Some things are impossible to the glorious perfections of God. 
God cannot do anything unbecoming his holiness and goodness ; 

« Magalano. de Scientia Dei, Part II. ¢. 6, §. 3. x Augus. 


28 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


any thing unworthy of himself, and against the perfections of his 
nature. God can do whatsoever he can will. As he doth actually 
do whatsoever he doth actually will, so it is possible for him to do 
whatsoever it is possible for him to will. He doth whatsoever he 
will, and can do whatsoever he can will; but he cannot do what he 
cannot will: he cannot will any unrighteous thing, and therefore 
cannot do any unrighteous thing. God cannot love sin, this is con- 
trary to his holiness; he cannot violate his word, this is a denial of 
his truth; he cannot punish an innocent, this is contrary to his 
goodness ; he cannot cherish an impenitent sinner, this is an injury 
to his justice; he cannot forget what is done in the world, this is a 
disgrace to his omniscience; he cannot deceive his creature, this is 
contrary to his faithfulness: none of these things can be done by 
him, because of the perfection of his nature. Would it not be an 
imperfection in God to absolve the guilty, and condemn the inno- 
cent? Is it congruous to the righteous and holy nature of God, to 
command murder and adultery; to command men not to worship 
him, but to be base and unthankful? These things would be against 
the rules of righteousness; as, when we say of a good man, he can- 
not rob or fight a duel, we do not mean that he wants a courage for 
such an act, or that he hath not a natural strength and knowledge 
to manage his weapon as well as another, but he hath a righteous 
principle strong in him which will not suffer him to do it; his will 
is settled against it: no power can pass into act unless applied by the 
will; but the will of God cannot will anything but what is worthy 
of him, and decent for his goodness, 

(1.) The Scripture saith it is impossible for God to lie (Heb. vi. 
18); and God cannot deny himself because of his faithfulness (2 
Tim. 1. 13). As he cannot die, because he is life itself; as he can 
not deceive, because he is goodness itself; as he cannot do an un- 
wise action, because he is wisdom itself, so he cannot speak a false 
word, because he is truth itself. If he should speak anything as 
true, and not know it, where is his infinite knowledge and compre- 
hensiveness of understanding? If he should speak anything as 
true, which he knows to be false, where is his infinite righteousness ? 
If he should deceive any creature, there is an end of his perfection 
of fidelity and veracity. If he should be deceived himself, there is 
an end of his omniscience; we must then fancy him to be a deceit- 
ful God, an ignorant God, that is, no God at all. If he should li, 
he would be God and no God; God upon supposition, and no God, 
because not the first truth.y All unrighteousness is weakness, not 
power; it is a defection from right reason, a deviation from moral 
principles, and the rule of perfect action, and ariseth from a defect 
of goodness and power: it is a weakness, and not omnipotence, to 
lose goodness: God is light; it is the perfection of light not to be- 
come darkness, and a want of power in light, if it should become 
darkness :# his power is infinitely strong, so is his wisdom infinitely 
clear, and his will infinitely pure: would it not be a part of weak- 
ness to have a disorder in himself, and these perfections shock one 
against another? Since all perfections are in God, in the most sovy- 

y Becan. sum. Theolog. p. 83. * Maximus Tyrius, 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 29 


ereign height of perfection, nothing can be done by the infiniteness 
of one against the infiniteness of the other. He would then be un- 
stable in his own perfections, and depart from the infinite rectitude 
of his own will, if he should do an evil action. Again,® what is an 
argument of greater strength, than to be utterly ignorant of infirm- 
ity? God is omnipotent because he cannot do evil, and would not 
be omnipotent if he could; those things would be marks of weak- 
ness, and not characters of majesty. Would you count a sweet foun- 
tain impotent because it cannot send forth bitter streams? or the sun 
weak, because it cannot diffuse darkness as well as light im the air? 
There is an inability arising from weakness, and an ability arising 
from perfection: it is the perfection of angels and blessed spirits, 
that they cannot sin; and it would be the imperfection of God, if he 
could do evil. 

(2.) Hence it follows, that it is impossible that a thing past should 
not be past. If we ascribe a power to God, to make a thing that is 
past not to be past, we do not truly ascribe power to him, but a 
weakness; for it is to make God to he, as though God might not 
have created man, yet, after he had created Adam, though he should 
presently have reduced Adam to his first nothing, yet it would be 
forever true that Adam was created, and it would forever be false that 
Adam never was created: so, though God may prevent sin, yet 
when sin hath been committed, it will alway be true that sin was 
committed ; it will never be true to say such a creature that did sin, 
did not sin; his sin cannot be recalled: though God, by pardon, 
take off the guilt of Peter's denying our Saviour, yet it will be eter- 
nally true that Peter did deny him. It is repugnant to the right- 
eousness and truth of God to make that which was once true to be- 
come false, and not true; that is, to make a truth to become a lie, 
and a lie to become a truth. This is well argued from Heb. vi. 18: 
‘It is impossible for God to lie.” The apostle argues, that what 
God had promised and sworn will come to pass, and cannot but 
come to pass.» Now, if God could make a thing past not to be 
Hea this consequence would not be good, for then he might make 

imself not to have promised, not to have sworn, after he hath 
promised and sworn; and so, if there were a power to undo that 
which is past, there would be no foundation for faith, no certainty 
of revelation. It cannot be asserted, that God hath created the 
world; that God hath sent his Son to die; that God hath accepted 
his death for man. These might not be true, if it were possible, 
that that which hath been done, might be said never to have been 
done: so that what any may imagine to be a want of power in God, 
is the highest perfection of God, and the greatest security to a be- 
heving creature that hath to do with God. 

4, Some things are impossible to be done, because of God’s ordi- 
nation. Some things are impossible, not in their own nature, but in 
regard of the determined will of God: so God might have destroy- 
ed the world after Adam’s fall, but it was impossible; not that God 
wanted power to do it, but because he did not only decree from 
eternity to create the world, but did also decree to redeem the world 

« Ambrose. > Becan. sum. Theol. p. 84. Crel. de Deo, cap. 22. 


30 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


by Jesus Christ, and erected the world in order to the manifestation 
of his ‘‘glory in Christ” (Eph. i. 4, 5). The choice of some in 
Christ was ‘before the foundation of the world.” Supposing that 
there was no hindrance in the justice of God to pardon thesin of Adam 
after his fall, and to execute no punishment on him, yet in regard 
of God’s threatening, that in the day he eat of the forbidden fruit 
he should die, it was impossible: so, though it was possible ‘that the 
cup should pass from our blessed Saviour, that is, possible in its own 
nature, yet it was not possible in regard of the determination of 
_ God’s will, since he had both decreed and published his will to re- 
deem man by the passion and blood of his Son. These things God, 
by his absolute power, might have done; but upon the account of 
his decree, they were impossible, because it is repugnant to the na- 
ture of God to be mutable: it is to deny his own wisdom which 
contrived them, and his own will which resolved them, not to do 
that which he had decreed to do. This would be a diffidence in his 
wisdom, and a change of his will. The impossibility of them is no 
result of a want of power, no mark of an imperfection, of feeble- 
ness and impotence; but the perfection of immutability and un- 
changeableness. Thus have I endeavored to give you a right no- 
tion of this excellent attribute of the power of God, in as plain terms 
as I could, which may serve us for a matter of meditation, admira- 
tion, fear of him, trust in him, which are the proper uses we should 
make of this doctrine of Divine power. The want of a right un- 
derstanding of this doctrine of the Divine power hath caused many 
to run into mighty absurdities; I have, therefore, taken the more 
pains to explain it. 

II. The second thing I proposed, is the reasons to prove God to 
be omnipotent. The Scripture describes God by this attribute of 
power (Ps. cxv. 3): “He hath done whatsoever he pleased.” It 
sometimes sets forth his power in a way of derision of those that 
seem to doubt of it. When Sarah doubted of his ability to give her 
a child in her old age (Gen. xviii. 14), “Is anything too hard for the 
Lord?” They deserve to be scoffed, that will despoil God of his 
Strength, and measure him by their shallow models. And when 
Moses uttered something of unbelief of this attribute, as if God were 
not able to feed 600,000 Israelites, besides women and children, 
which he aggravates by a kind of imperious scoff; ‘Shall the flocks 
and the herds be slain for them to suffice them ? Or, shall all the 
fish of the sea be gathered together for them?” &c. (Numb. xi. 22). 
God takes him up short (ver. 23): ‘Is the Lord’s hand waxed short?” 
What! can any weakness seize upon my hand? Can I draw out of 
my own treasures what is needful for a supply? The hand of God 
is not at one time strong, and another time feeble. Hence it is that 
we read of the hand and arm of God, an outstretched arm; because 
the strength of a man is exerted by his hand and arm; the power of 
God is called the arm of his power, and the right hand of hig strength. 
Sometimes, according to the different manifestation ot it, it is ex- 
pressed by finger, when a less power is evidenced ; by hand, when 
something greater; by arm, when more mighty than the former. 
Since God is eternal, without limits of time, he is also Almi zhty, 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 81 


without limits of strength. As he cannot be said to be more in being 
now than he was before, so he is neither more nor less in strength 
than he was before: as he cannot cease to be so, so he cannot 
cease to be powerful, because he is eternal. His eternity and power 
are linked together as equally demonstrable (Rom. 1. 20); God is 
called the God of gods #1 Hlohim (Dan. xi. 36); the Mighty of 
mighties, whence all mighty persons have their activity and vigor: 
he is called the Lord of Hosts, as being the Creator and Conductor 
of the heavenly militia. 

Reason 1. The power that is in creatures demonstrates a greater 
and an unconceivable power in God. Nothing in the world is without 
a power of activity according to its nature: no creature but can act 
something. The sun warms and enlightens everything: 1t sends its 
influences upon the earth, into the bowels of the earth, into the depths 
of the sea: all generations owe themselves to its instrumental virtue. 
How powerful is a small seed to rise into a mighty tree with a lofty 
top, and extensive branches, and send forth other seeds, which can 
still multiply into numberless plants! How wonderful is the power 
of the Creator, who hath endowed so small a creature as a seed, with 
so fruitful an activity! Yet this is but the virtue of a limited nature. 
God is both the producing and preserving cause of all the virtue in 
any creature, in every creature. The power of every creature be- 
longs to him as the Fountain, and is truly his power in the creature. 
As he is the first Being, he is the original of all being; as he is the 
first Good, he is the spring of all goodness; as he is the first Truth, 
he is the source of all truth; so, as he is the first Power, he is the 
fountain of all power. 

1. He, therefore, that communicates to the creature what power it 
hath, contains eminently much more power in himself. (Ps. xciv. 
10), ‘‘ He that teaches man knowledge, shall not he know?” So he 
that gives created beings power, shall not he be powerful? The first 
Being must have as much power as he hath given to others: he could 
not transfer that upon another, which he did not transcendently 
possess himself. The sole cause of created power cannot be destitute 
of any power in himself. We see that the power of one creature 
transcends the power of another. Beasts can do the things that 
plants cannot do; besides the power of growth, they have a power 
of sense and progressive motion. Men can do more than beasts; 
they have rational souls to measure the earth and heavens, and to be 
repositories of multitudes of things, notions, and conclusions. We 
may well imagine angels to be far superior to man: the power of the 
Creator must far surmount the power of the creature, and must needs 
be infinite: for if it be limited, it is limited by himself or by some 
other; if by some other, he is no longer a Creator, but a creature ; 
for that which limits him in his nature, did communicate that nature 
to him; not by himself, for he would not deny himself any neces- 
sary perfection: we must still conclude a reserve of power in him, 
that he that made these can make many more of the same kind. 

2. All the power which is distinct in the creatures, must be united 
in God. One creature hath a strength to do this, another to do that ; 
every creature is as a cistern filled with a particular and limited 


89 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES, 


power, according to the capacity of its nature, from this fountain; 
all are distinct streams from God. But the strength of every creature, 
though distinct in the rank of creatures, is united in God the centre, 
whence those lines were drawn, the fountain whence those streams 
were derived. If the power of one creature be admirable, as the 
power of an angel, which the Psalmist saith (Ps. ciii. 20), “ excelleth 
in strength ;” how much greater must the power of a legion of angels 
be! How inconceivably superior the power of all those numbers of 
spiritual natures, which are the excellent works of God! Now, if all 
this particular power, which is in every angel distinct, were com- 
pacted in one angel, how would it exceed our understanding, and be 
above our power to form a distinct conception of it! What is thus 
divided in every angel, must be thought united in the Creator of 
angels, and far more excellentin him. Hverything isin a more noble 
manner in the fountain, than in the streams which distil and descend 
from it. He that is the Original of all those distinct powers, must be 
the seat of all power without distinction: in him is the union of all 
without division; what is in them as a quality, is in him as his 
essence. Again, if all the powers of several creatures, with all their 
principal qualities and vigors, both of beasts, plants, and rational 
creatures, were united in one subject; as if one lon had the strength 
of all the lions that ever were; or, if one elephant had the strength 
of all the elephants that ever were; nay, if one bee had all the power 
of motion and stinging that all bees ever had, it would have a vast 
strength; but if the strength of all those thus gathered into one of 
every kind should be lodged in one sole creature, one man, would it 
not be a strength too big for our conception? Or, suppose one can- 
non had all the force of all the cannons that ever were in the world, 
what a battery would it make, and, as it were, shake the whole frame 
of heaven andearth! All this strength must be much more incompre- 
hensible in God; all is united in him. If it were in one individual 
created nature, it would still be but a finite power in a finite nature: 
but in God it is infinite and immense. 

Reason 2. If there were not an incomprehensible power in God, 
he would not be infinitely perfect. God is the first Being; it can 
only be said of him, Hs?, he is. All other things are nothing to him; 
“less than nothing and vanity” (Isa. xl. 17), and ‘‘reputed as nothing” 
- (Dan. iv. 85). All the inhabitants of the earth, with all their wit 
and strength, are counted as if they were not; just in comparison 
with Him and his being, as a little mote in the sun-beams: God, 
therefore, is a pure Being. Any kind of weakness whatsoever is a 
defect, a degree of not being; so far as anything wants this or that 
power, it may be said not to be. Were there anything of weakness 
in God, any want of strength which belonged to the perfection of 
a nature, it might be said of God, He is not this or that, he wants 
this or that perfection of Being, and so he would not be a pure Being, 
there would be something of not being in him. But God being the 
first Being, the only original Being, he is infinitely distant from not 
being, and therefore infinitely distant from anything of weakness. 
Again, if God can know whatsoever is possible to be done by him, 
and cannot do it, there would be something more in his knowledge 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 838 


than in his power. What would then follow? That the essence of 
God would be in some regard greater than itself, and less than itself, 
because his knowledge and his power are his essence; his power as 
much his essence as his knowledge: and therefore, in regard of 
his knowledge, his essence would be greater; in regard of his power, 
his essence would be less; which is a thing impossible to be con- 
ceived in a most perfect Being. We must understand this of those 
things which are properly and in their own nature subjected to 
the Divine knowledge; for otherwise God knows more than he can 
do, for he knows sin, but he cannot act it, because sin belongs not 
to power but weakness; and sin comes under the knowledge of God, 
not in itself and its own nature, but as it is a defect from God, and 
contrary to geod, which is the proper object of Divine knowledge. 
He knows it also not as possible to be done by himself, but as possi- 
ble to be done by the creature. Again, if God were not omnipotent, 
we might imagine something more perfect than God :4 for if we bar 
God from any one thing which in its own nature is possible, we may 
imagine a being that can do that thing, one that is able to effect it; 
and so imagine an agent greater than God, a being able to do more 
than God is able to do, and consequently a being more perfect than 
God: but no being more perfect than God can be imagined by any 
creature. Nothing can be called most perfect, if anything of activity 
be wanting to it. Active power follows the perfection of a thing, 
and all things are counted more noble by how much more of efficacy 
and virtue they possess. We count those the best and most perfect 
plants, that have the greatest medicinal virtue in them, and power 
# working upon the body for the cure of distempers. God 1s per- 
fet of himself, and therefore most powerful of himself. If his per- 
fection in wisdom and goodness be unsearchable, his power, which 
belongs to perfection, and without which all the other excellencies of 
his nature were insignificant, and could not show themselves, (as was 
before evidenced,) must be unsearchable also. It is by the title of 
Almighty he is denominated, when declared to be unsearchable to 
perfection (Job xi. 7): “Canst thou by searching find out God, canst 
thou find out the Almighty to perfection?” This would be limited 
and searched out, if he were destitute of an active ability to do 
whatsoever he pleased to do, whatsoever was possible to be done. 
As he hath not a perfect liberty of will, if he could not will what 
he pleased; so he would not have a perfect activity, if he could not 
do what he willed. 

Reason 3. The simplicity of God manifests it. Hvery substance, 
the more spiritual it is, the more powerful it is. All perfections are 
more united in a simple, than im a compounded being. Angels, 
being spirits, are more powerful than bodies. Where there is the 
greatest simplicity, there is the greatest unity; and where there is 
the greatest unity, there is the greatest power. Where there is a 
composition of a faculty and a member, the member or organ may 
be weakened and rendered unable to act, though the power dot 
still reside in the faculty. As aman, when his arm or hand is cut 
off or broke, he hath the faculty of motion still; but he hath lost 


© Victorin. in Petar. Tom. I. p. 333. 4 Thid. p. 233. 
VOL. I1.—3 


34 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


that instrument that part whereby he did manifest and put forth 
that motion: but God being a pure spiritual nature, hath no mem- 
bers, no organs to be defaced or impaired. All impediments of 
actions arise either from the nature of the thing that acts, or from 
something without it. There can be no hindrance to God to de 
whatsoever he pleases; not in himself, because he is the most sim- 
ple being, hath no contrariety in himself, is not composed of divers 
things; and it cannot be from anything without himself, because 
nothing is equal to him, much less superior. He is the greatest, the 
Supreme: all things were made by him, depend upon him, nothing 
can disappoint his intentions. 

Reason 4. The miracles that have been in the @yorld evidence the 
power of God. Extraordinary productions have awakened men 
from their stupidity, to the acknowledgment of the immensity of 
Divine power. Mhracles are such effects as have been wrought 
without the assistance and co-operation of natural causes, yea, con- 
trary and besides the ordinary course of nature, above the reach of 
‘any created power. Miracles have been; and saith Bradwardine,° 
to deny that ever such things were, is uncivil: it is inhuman to 
deny all the histories of Jews and Christians; whosoever denies 
miracles, must deny all possibility of miracles, and so must imagine 
himself fully skilled in the extent of Divine power. How was the 
sun suspended from its motion for some hours (Josh. x. 18); “the 
dead raised from the grave;” those reduced from the brink of it, 
that had been brought near to it by prevailing diseases; and this by 
a word speaking? How were the famished lions bridled from ex- 
ercising their rage upon Daniel, exposed to them for a prey (Dan 
vi. 22)? the activity of the fire curbed for the preservation of the 
three children (Dan. iii. 15)? which proves a Deity more powerfus 
than all creatures. No power upon earth can hinder the operation 
of the fire upon combustible matter, when they are united, unless by 
quenching the fire, or removing the matter: but no created power 
can restrain the fire, so long as it remains so, from acting according 
to its nature. This was done by God in the case of the three chil- 
dren, and that of the burning bush (Exod. in. 2). It was as much 
miraculous that the bush should not consume, as it was natural that 
it should burn by the efficacy of the fire upon it. No element is so 
obstinate and deaf, but it hears and obeys his voice, and performs 
his orders, though contrary to its own nature: all the violence or 
the creature is suspended as soon as it receives his command. He 
that gave the original to nature, can take away the necessity of na- 
ture ;f he presides over creatures, but is not confined to those laws 
he hath prescribed to creatures. He framed nature, and can turn 
the channels of nature according to his own pleasure. Men dig into 
the bowels of nature, search into all the treasures of it, to find 
medicines to cure a disease, and after all their attempts it may 

rove labor in vain: but God, by one act of his will, one word of 
is mouth, overturns the victory of death, and rescues from the most 
desperate diseases. All the miracles which were wrought by the 
apostles, either speaking some words or touching with the hand, 
* Lib. i. cap. 1. p. 38. £ Damianus, in Petar. ® Fauch. in Acts. Vol. IL § 56. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 385 


were not effected by any virtue inherent in their words or in their 
touches; for such virtue inherent in any created finite subject would be 
created and finite itself, and consequently were incapable to produce 
effects which required an infinite virtue, as miracles do which are 
above the power of nature. So when our Saviour wrought miracles, 
it was not by any quality resident in his human nature, but by the 
sole power of his Divinity. The flesh could only do what was 
proper to the flesh; but the Deity did what was proper to the Deity. 
“God alone doth wonders” (Ps. cxxxvi. 4): excluding every other 
cause from producing those things. He only doth those things 
which are above the power of nature, and cannot be wrought by 
any natural causes whatsoever. He doth not hereby put his omni- 
potence to any stress: it is as easy with him to turn nature out of 
its settled course, as it was to place it in that station it holds, and 
appoint it that course it runs. All the works of nature are indeed 
miracles and testimonies of the power of God producing them, and 
sustaining them: but works above the power of nature, being novel- 
ties and unusual, strike men with a greater admiration upon their 
appearance, because they are not the products of nature, but the 
convulsions of it. I might also add as an argument, the power of 
the mind of man to conceive more than hath been wrought by God 
in the world. And God can work whatsoever perfection the mind 
of man can conceive: otherwise the reaches of a created imagina- 
tion and fancy would be more extensive than the power of God. 
His power, therefore, is far greater than the conception of any intel- 
lectual creature; else the creature would be of a greater capacity to 
conceive than God is to effect. The creature would have a power 
“of conception above God’s power of activity ; and consequently a 
creature, in some respect greater than himself. Now whatsoever a 
ereature can conceive possible to be done, is but finite in its own 
nature; and if God could not produce what being a created under- 
standing can conceive possible to be done, he would be less than 
infinite in power, nay, he could not go to the extent of what is 
finite. But I have touched this before; that.God can create more 
than he hath created, and in a more perfect way of being, as con- 
sidered simply in themselves. 

Ilf. The third general thing is to declare, how the power of God 
appears in Creation, in Government, in Redemption. 

Frrst, In Creation. With what majestic lines doth God set 
for his power, in the giving being and endowments to all the crea- 
tures in the world (Job xxxvii.)! All that is in heaven and earth 
is his, and shows the greatness of his power, glory, victory, and ma- 
jesty (1 Chron. xxix. 11). The heaven being so magnificent a piece 
of work, is called emphatically, “the firmament of his power” (Ps. 
cl. 1); his power beimg more conspicuous and unavailed in that 
glorious arch of the world. Indeed, “God exalts by his power” 
(Job xxxvi. 22), that is, exalts himself by his power in all the 
works of his hands; in the smallest shrub, as well as the most 
glorious sun. All his works of nature are truly miracles, though 
we consider them not, being blinded with two frequent and cus- 
tomary a sight of them; yet, in the neglect of all the rest, the view 


36 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of the heavens doth more affect us with astonishment at the might 
of God’s arm: these declare his glory, and “the firmament showeth 
his handy work” (Ps. xix. 1). And the Psalmist peculiarly calls 
them his heavens, and the work of his fingers (Ps, vill, 3): these 
were immediately created by God, whereas many other things in the 
world were brought into being by the power of God, yet by the 
means of the influence of the heavens. 

1. His power is the first thing evident in the story of the creation. 
“Tn the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1. 
1). There is no appearance of anything in this declaratory preface, 
but of power: the characters of wisdom march after in the distinct. 
formation of things, and animating them with suitable qualities for 
an universal good. By heaven and earth, is meant the whole mass 
of the creatures: by heaven, all the airy region, with all the host of 
it; by the earth, is meant, all that which makes the entire inferior 
globe. The Jews observe, that in the first of Genesis, in the whole 
chapter, unto the finishing the work in six days, God is called m1n>x, 
which is a name of Power, and that thirty-two times in that chapter; 
but after the finishing the six days’ work, he is called om>xn, which, 
according to their notion, is a name of goodness and kindness: his 
power is first visible in framing the world, before his goodness is 
visible in the sustaining and preserving it. It was by this name of 
Power and Almighty that he was known in the first ages of the 
world, not by his name, Jehovah (Exod. vi. 8): “ And I appeared 
unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, by the name of God Almighty ; but 
by my name Jehovah was I not known tothem.” Not but that they 
were acquainted with the name, but did not experience the intent of 
the name, which signified his truth in the performance of his prom- 
ises; they knew him by that name as promising, but they knew him 
not by that name, as performing. He would be known by his name 
Jehovah, true to his word, when he was about to effect the deliver- 
ance from Keypt; a type of the eternal redemption, wherein the 
truth of God, in performing of his first promise, is gloriously magni- 
fied. And hence it is that God is called Almighty more in the book 
of Job than in all the Scripture besides, I think about thirty-two 
times, and Jehovah but once, which is Job xii. 9, unless in Job 
¥xXxvill. when God is introduced speaking himself; which is an 
argument of Job's living before the deliverance from Hgypt, when 
God was known more by his works of creation than by the perform- 
ance of his promises, before the name Jehovah was formally publish- 
ed. Indeed, this attribute of his eternal power, is the first thing 
visible and intelligible upon the first glance of the eye upon the 
ereatures (Rom. i. 20). Bring a man out of the cave where he hath 
been nursed, without seeing anything out of the confines of it, and 
let him lift up his eyes to the heavens, and take a prospect of that 
glorious body, the sun, then cast them down. to the earth, and behold 
the surface of it, with its green clothing; the first notion which will 
start up in his mind from that spring of wonders, is that of power, 
which he will at first adore with a religious astonishment. The wis- 
dom of God in them is not so presently apparent, till after a more 

h Mercer. p. 7, col. 1, 2. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 37 


exquisite consideration of his works and knowledge of the proper- 
ties of their natures, the conveniency of their situations, and the use- 
fulness of their functions, and the order wherein they are linked 
together for the good of the universe. 

2. By this creative power God is often distinguished from all the 
idols and false gods in the world. And by this title he sets forth 
himself when he would act any great and wonderful work in the 
world (Ps. exxxv. 5, 6): “He is great above all gods,” for “ he hath 
done whatsoever he pleased in heaven and in earth.” Upon this is 
founded all the worship he challengeth in the world, as his peculiar, 
glory (Rev. iv. 11): “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, 
honor, and power, for thou hast created all things.” And (Rev. x. 6) 
“T have made the earth, and created man upon it.” “I, even m 
hands, have stretched out the heavens, and all their host have 
commanded” (Isa. xlv. 12). What is the issue (ver. 16)? “ They 
shall be ashamed and confounded, all of them, that are makers of 
idols.” And the weakness of idols is expressed. by this title. “ The 
gods that have not made the heavens and the earth” (Jer. x. 11). 
“The portion of Jacob is not like them, for he is the former of all 
things” (ver. 16). What is not that God able to do, that hath created 
so great a world? How doth the power of God appear in creation ? 

ist. In making the world of nothing. When we say, the world 
was made of nothing, we mean, that there was no matter existent for 
God to work upon, but what he raised himself in the first act of 
ereation. In this regard, the power of God in creation surmounts, 
his power in providence. Creation supposeth nothing, providence 
supposeth something in being. Creation intimates a creature making, 
providence speaks a thing already made, and capable of government, 
and in government. God uses second causes to bring about his 
purposes. , 

1. The world was made of nothing. The earth which is described 
as the first matter, without any form or ornament, without any dis- 
tinction or figures, was of God’s forming in the bulk, before he did 
adorn it with his pencil (Gen. i. 1, 2). God, in the beginning, crea- 
ting the heaven and the earth, includes two things: First. That 
those were created in the beginning of time, and before all other 
things. Secondly. That God begun the creation of the world from 
those things.: ‘Therefore before the heavens and the earth there was 
nothing absolutely created, and therefore no matter in being before 
an act of creation passed upon it. It could not be eternal, because 
nothing can be eternal but Ged; it must therefore have a beginning. 
Ifit had a beginning from itself, then it was before it was. If it 
acted in the making itself before it was made, then it had a being 
before it had a being; fer that which is nothing, can act nothing: 
the action of anything supposeth the existence of the thing which 
acts. It being made, it was not before it was made; for to be made 
is to be brought into being. It was made, then, by another, and 
that Maker is God. It is necessary that the First Original of things 
was from nothing: when we see one thing to arise from another, we 
must suppose an original of the first of each kind; as, when we see 

* Suarez, VoL IIL. p. 33. 


88 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


a tree spring up from a seed, we know that seed came out of the 
bowels of another tree; it had a parent, it had a master; we must 
come to some first, or else we run into an endless maze: we must 
come to some first tree, some first seed that had no cause of the same 
kind, no matter of it, but was mere nothing. Creation doth suppose 
a production from nothing; because, if you suppose a thing without 
any real or actual existence, it is not capable of any other production 
than from nothing: nothing must be supposed before the world, or 
we must suppose it eternal, and that is to deny it to be a creature, 
and make it God.k The creation of spiritual substances, such as 

angels and souls, evince this; those things that are purely spiritual, 
and consist not of matter, cannot pretend to any original from matter, 
and therefore they rose up from nothing. If spiritual things arose 
from nothing, much more may corporeal, because they are of a lower 
nature than spiritual; and he that can create a higher nature of 
nothing, can create an inferior nature of nothing. As bodily things 
are more imperfect than spiritual, so their creation may be supposed 
easier than that of spiritual. There was as little need of any matter 
to be wrought to his hands, to contrive into this visible fabric, as 
there was to erect such an excellent order as the glorious cheru 
bims. 

2. This creation of things from nothing speaks an infinite power 
The distance between nothing and being hath been alway counted 
so great, that nothing but an Infinite Power can make such distances 
meet together, either for nothing to pass into being, or being to re- 
turn to nothing. ‘To have a thing arise from nothing, was so difficult 
a text to those that were ignorant of the Scripture, that they knew 
not how to fathom it, and therefore laid it down asa certain rule, 
that of nothing, nothing is made; which is true of a created power, 
but-not of an uncreated and Almighty Power. A greater distance 
cannot be imagined than that which 1s between nothing and some- 
thing; that which hath no being, and that which hath; and a greater 
power cannot be imagined than that which brings something out of 
nothing. We know not how to conceive a nothing, and afterwards 
a being from that nothing; but we must remain swallowed up in 
admiration of the Cause that gives it being, and acknowledge it to 
be without any bounds and measures of greatness and power.! The 
further anything is from being, the more immense must that power 
be which brings it into being: it is not conceivable that the power 
of all the angels in one can give being to the smallest spire of grass. 
To imagine, therefore, so small a thing asa bee, a fly, a grain of 
corn, or an atom of dust, to be made of nothing, would stupefy any 
creature in the consideration of it, much more to behold the heavens, 
with all the troop of stars; the earth, with all its embroidery ; and 
the sea, with all her inhabitants of fish; and man, the noblest crea- 
ture of all, to arise out of the womb of mere emptiness. Indeed, 
God had not acted as an almighty Creator, if he had stood in need 
of any materials but of his own framing: it had been as much as his 
Deity was worth, if he had not had all within the compass of his 
own power that was necessary to operation; if he must have been 

* Suarez, Vol. IIL. p. 6. 1 Amyrald Morale. Tom. I. p. 252. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 39 


beholden to something without himself, and above himself, for mate 
ter to work upon: had there been such a necessity, we could not 
have imagined him to be omnipotent, and, consequently, not God. 

3. In this the power of God exceeds the power of all natural and 
rational agents. Nature, or the order of second causes, hath a vast 
power; the sun generates flies and other insects, but of some matter, 
the slime of the earth or a dunghill; the sun and the earth bring 
forth harvests of corn, but from seed first sown in the earth; fruits 
are brought forth, but from the sap of the plant; were there no seed 
or plants in the earth, the power of the earth would be idle, and the 
influence of the sun insignificant; whatsoever strength either of 
them had in their nature, must be useless without matter to work 
upon. All the united strength of nature cannot produce the least 
thing out of nothing; it may multiply and increase things, by 
the powerful blessing God gave it at the first erecting of the world, 
but it cannot create. The word which signifies creation, used in Gen. 
i. 1, is not ascribed to any second cause, but only to God ; a word, 
in that sense, as incommunicable to anything else as the action it 
signifies. Rational creatures can produce admirable pieces of art 
from small things, yet still out of matter created to their hands. Ex- 
cellent garments may be woven, but from the entrails of a small 
silkworm. Delightful and medicinal spirits and esserices may be ex- 
tracted, by ingenious chemists, but out of the bodies of plants and 
minerals. No picture can be drawn without colors; no statue en- 
graven without stone; no building erected without timber, stones, 
and other materials: nor can any man raise a thought without some 
matter framed to his hands, or cast into him. Matter is, by nature, 
formed to the hands of all artificers; they bestow a new figure upon 
it, by the help of instruments, and the product of their own wit and 
skill, but they create not the least particle of matter; when they 
want it, they must be supplied or else stand still, as well as nature, 
for none of them, or all together, can make the least mite or atom: 
and when they have wrought all that they can, they will not want 
some to find a flaw and defect in their work. God, as a Creator, 
hath the only prerogative to draw what he pleases from nothing, 
without any defect, without any imperfection: he can raise what 
matter he please ; ennoble it with what form he pleases. Of nothing, 
nothing can be made, by any created agent: but the omnipotent 
Architect of the world is not under the same necessity, nor is limited 
to the same rule, and tied by so short a tedder as created nature, or 
an ingenious, yet feeble artificer. 

2d. It appears, in raising such variety of creatures from this bar- 
ren womb of nothing, or from the matter which he first commanded 
to appear out of nothing. Had there been any pre-existent matter, 
yet the bringing forth such varieties and diversities of excellent 
creatures, some with life, some with sense, and others with reason 
superadded to the rest, and those out of indisposed and undigested 
matter, would argue an infinite power resident in the first Author of 
this variegated fabric. From this matter he formed that glorious 
sun, which every day displays its glory, scatters its beams, clears the 
air, ripens our fruits, and maintains the propagation of creatures in 


40) CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


the world. From this matter he lighted those torches which he set 
im the heaven to qualify the darkness of the night: from this he 
compacted those bodies of light, which, though they seem to us as 
little sparks, as if they were the glow-worms of heaven, yet some of 
them exceed in greatness this globe of the earth on which we live: 
and the highest of them hath so quick a motion, that some tell us 
they run, in the space of every hour, 42,000,000 of leagues. From 
#he same matter he drew the ¢arth on which we walk; from thence 
he extracted the flowers to adorn it, the hills to secure the valleys, 
and the rocks to fortify it against the inundations of the sea; and 
on this dull and sluggish element he bestowed so great a fruitfulness, 
to maintain, feed,.and multiply so many seeds of different kinds, 
and conferred upon those little bodies of seeds a power to multiply 
their kinds, in conjunction with the fruitfulness of the earth, to many 
thousands. From this rude matter, the slime or dust of the earth, 
he kneaded the body of man, and wrought so curious a fabric, fit to 
entertain a soul of 4 heavenly extraction, formed by the breath of 
God (Gen. ii. 7). He brought light out of thick darkness, and liv- 
ing creatures, fish and fowl, out of inanimate waters (Gen. 1. 20), and 
gave a power of spontaneous motion to things arising from that 
matter which had no living motion. To convert one thing into 
another, is an ‘evidence of infinite power, as well as creating things 
of nothing; for the distance between life and not life is next to that 
which is between being and not being. God first forms matter out 
ef nothing, and then draws upon, and from this indisposed chaos, 
many excellent portraitures. Neither earth nor sea were capable of 
producing living creatures without an infinite power working upon 
it, and bringing into it such variety and multitude of forms; and 
this is called, by some, mediate creation, as the producing the chaos, 
which was without form and void, is called immediate creation. Is 
not the power of the potter admirable in forming, out of tempered 
clay, such varieties of neat and curious vessels, that, after they are 
fashioned and past the furnace, look as if they were not of any kin 
to the matter they are formed of? and is it not the same with the 
glass-maker, that, from a little melted jelly of sand and ashes, or the 
dust of flint, can blow up so pure a body as glass, and in such va- 
rieties of shapes? and is not the power of God more admirable, be- 
eause infinite in speaking out so beautiful a world out of nothing, 
and such varieties of living creatures from matter utterly indisposed, 
in its own nature, for such forms? | 

84. And this conducts to a third thing, wherein the power of God 
appears, in that he did all this with the greatest ease and facility. 

1. Without instruments. As God made the world without the 
advice, so without the assistance, of any other: ‘He stretched 
forth the heavens alone, and spread abroad the earth by himself” 
(Isa. xliv. 24). He had no engine, but his word; no pattern or 
model, but himself. What need can he have of instruments, that 
ig able to create what instruments he pleases? Where there is 
no resistance in the object, where no need of preparation or in- 
strumental advantage in the agent; there the actual determination 
of the will is sufficient to a production. What instrument need 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 41 


we to the thinking of a thought, or an act of our will? Men, 
indeed, cannot act anything without tools; the best artificer must 
be beholden to something else for his noblest works of art. The 
carpenter cannot work without his rule, and axe, and saw, and 
other instruments; the watch-maker cannot act without his file 
and pliers; but in creation, there is nothing necessary to God's 
bringing forth a world, but a simple act of his will, which is 
both the principal cause, and instrumental. He had no scaffolds 
to rear it, no engines to polish it, no hammers or mattocks to clod 
and work it together. It is a miserable error to measure the actions 
of an Infinite Cause by the imperfect model of a finite, since, by his 
own ‘power and out-stretched arm, he made the heaven and the 
earth” (Jer. xxx. 17). What excellency would God have in his 
work above others, if he needed instruments, as feeble men do?™ 
Every artificer is counted more admirable, that can frame curious 
works with the less matter, fewer tools, and assistances. God uses 
instruments in his works of providence, not for necessity, but for the 
display of his wisdom in the management of them; yet those in- 
struments were originally framed by him without instruments. In- 
deed, some of the Jews thought the angels were the instruments of 
God in creating man, and that those words, ‘‘ Let us make man in 
our own image” (Gen. i. 26), were spoken to angels. But certainly 
the Scripture, which denies God any counsellor in the model of 
creation (Isa. xl. 12—14), doth not join any instrument with him in 
the operation, which is everywhere ascribed to himself ‘“ without 
created assistance” (Isa. xlv. 18). It was not to angels God spake 
in that affair; if so, man was made after the image of angels, if they 
were companions with God in that work; but it is everywhere said, 
that ‘‘ Man was made after the image of God” (Gen. i. 27). Again, 
the image wherein man was created, was that of dominion over the 
lower creatures, as appears ver. 26, which we find not conferred upon 
angels; and it 1s not likely that Moses should introduce the angels, 
as God’s privy counsel, of whose creation he had not mentioned one 
syllable. ‘‘ Let us make man,” rather signifies the Trinity, and not 
spoken in a royal style, as some think. Which of the Jewish kings 
wrote in the style, We? That was the custom of later times; and 
we must not measure the language of Scripture by the style of 
Europe, of a far later date than the penning the history of the crea- 
tion. If angels were his counsellors in the creation of the material 
world, what instrument had he in the creation of angels? If his 
own wisdom were the director, and his own will the producer of the 
one; why should we not think, that he acted by his sole power in 
the other? It is concluded by most, that the power of creation can- 
not be derived to any creature, it being a work of omnipotency ; the 
drawing something out from nothing, cannot be communicated 
without a communication of the Deity itself. The educing things 
from nothing exceeds the capacity of any creature, and the creature 
is of too feeble a nature to be elevated to so high a degree. It is 
very unreasonable to think, that God needed any such aid. If an 
instrument were necessary for God to create the world, then he could 
m Gassend, 


42 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


not do it without that instrument: if he could not, he were not then 
all-sufficient in himself, if he depended upon anything without him- 
self, for the production or consummation of his works. And it 
might be inquired, how that instrument came into being; if it 
begun to be, and there was a time when it was not, it must have 
its being from the power of God; and then, why could not God 
as well create all things without an instrment, as create that in- 
strument without an instrament? Tor there was no more power 
necessary to a producing the whole without instruments, than to 
produce one creature without an instrument. No creature can, 
in its own nature, be an instrument of creation. If any such in- 
strument were used by God, it must be elevated in a miraculous 
and supernatural way; and what is so an instrument, is, in effect, 
no instrument; for it works nothing by its own nature, but from 
an elevation by a superior nature, and beyond its own nature. 
All that power in the instrument is truly the power of God, and 
not the power of the instrument; and, therefore, what God doth 
by an instrument, he could do as well without. If you should 
see one apply straw to iron, for the cutting of it, and effect it, 
you would not call the straw an instrument in that action, be- 
cause there was nothing in the nature of the straw to do it. It 
was done wholly by some other force, which might have done it 
as well without the straw as with it. ‘The narrative of the creation 
in Genesis, removes any instrument from God. The plants which 
are preserved and propagated by the influence of the sun, were 
created the day before the sun, viz. on the “third day,” whereas, the 
hight was collected into the body of the sun on the “fourth day” (Gen. 
1. 11, 16); to show, that though the plants do instrumentally owe 
their yearly beauty and preservation to the sun, yet they did not in 
any manner owe their creation to the instrumental heat and vigor 
of it. | 

2. God created the world by a word, by a simple act of his will. 
The whole creation is wrought by a word; “God said, Let there be 
hght;” and “God said, Let there be a firmament.”2 Not that we 
should understand it of a sensible word, but understand it of a 
powerful order of his own will, which is expressed by the Psalmist 
in the nature of a command (Ps. xxxii 9): “He spake, and it was 
done ; he commanded, and it stood fast;” and (Ps. exlvii, 5), ‘ He 
commanded, and they were created.” At the same instant that he 
willed them to stand forth, they did stand forth. The efficacious 
command of the Creator was the original of all things: the insensi- 
bility of nothing obeyed the act of his will. Creation is therefore 
entitled a calling (Rom. iv. 17): ‘He calls those things which are 
not, as if they were.” ‘T’o create is no more with God, than to call; 
and what he calls, presents itself before him in the same posture that 
he calls it. He did with more ease make a world, than we can form 
a thought. It is the same ease to him to create worlds, as to decree 
them; there needs no more than a resolve to have things wrought 
at such a time, and they will be, according to his pleasure. This 
will is his power; ‘“ Let there be light,” is the precept of his will; 


2 Gen. i. 3, 5, de. throughout the whole chapter. 


My 
ON THE POWER OF GOD. 43 


and “there was light,” is the effect of his precept. By a word, was 
the matter of the heavens and the earth framed; by a word, things 
separate themselves from the rude mass into their proper forms; by 
a word, light associates itself into one body, and forms a sun; by a 
word, are the heavens, as it were, bespangled with stars, and the 
earth dressed with flowers; by a word, is the world both ceiled and 
floored: one act of his will, formed the world, and perfected its 
beauty. All the variety and several exploits of his power were not 
caused by distinct words or acts of power. God uttered not distinct 
words for distinct species; as, let there be an elephant, and let there 
be a lion; but as he produced those various creatures out of one 
matter, so by one word. By one single command, those varieties of 
creatures, with their clothing, ornaments, distinct notes, qualities, 
functions, were brought forth (Gen. 1.11): by one word, all the seeds 
of the earth, with their various virtues: by one word, all the fish of 
the sea, and fowls of the air, in their distinct natures, instincts, colors 
(Gen. 1. 20): by one word, all the beasts of the field, with their va- 
rieties (Gen. 1. 24). Heaven and earth, spiritual and corporeal crea- 
tures, mortal and immortal, the greater and the less, visible and in- 
visible, were formed with the same ease :° a word made the least, 
and a word made the greatest. It is as little difficulty to him to pro- 
duce the highest angel, as the lighest atom. It is enough for the 
existence of the stateliest cherubim, for God only to will his being. 
It was enough for the forming and fixing the sun, to will the com- 
pacting of light into one body. The creation of the soul of man is 
expressed by inspiration (Gen. il. 7); to show, that it is as easy with 
God to create a rational soul, as for man to breathe.p Breathing is 
natural to man, by a communication of God’s goodness; and the 
creation of the soul is as easy to God, by virtue of his Almighty 
word. As there was no proportion between nothing and being, so 
there was as little proportion between a word and such glorious 
effects. A mere voice, coming from an Omnipotent will, was capa- 
ble to produce such varieties, which angels and men have seen in all 
ages of the world, and this without weariness. What labor is there 
in willing? what pain could there be in speakinga word? (Isa. xl. 
28), “The Creator of the ends cf the earth is not weary.” And 
though he be said to rest after the creation, it is to be meant a rest 
from work, not a repose from weariness. So great isethe power of 
God, that without any matter, without any instruments, he could 
create many worlds, and with the same ease as he made this. 

4th. I might add also, the appearance of this power in the instan- 
taneous production of things. ‘T’he ending of his word was not only 
the beginning, but the perfection of every thing he spake into being ; 
not several words to several parts and members, but one word, one 
breath of his mouth, one act of his will, to the whole species of the 
creatures, and to every member in each individual. Heaven and 
earth were created in a moment; six days went to their disposal; 
and that comely order we observe in the world was the work of a 
week: the matter was formed as soon as God had spoken the word ; 
and in every part of the creation, as soon as God spake the word, 

° Augus. ’ P Theodoret. 


ol 


44 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


‘Let it be so” (Gen. i.), the answer immediately is, “It was so ;” 
which notes the present standing up of the creature according to the 
act of his* will: and, therefore,1 one observes, that ‘‘ Let there be 
light, and there was light ;” in the Hebrew are the same words, with- 
out any altcration of letter or point, only the conjunctive particle 
added, ~“x 2m 4x on, “ Let there be light, and let there be light,” to 
show, that the same instant of the speaking the Divine word, was the 
appearance of the creature: so great was the authority of his will. 

SECONDLY, We are to show God’s power in the GOVERNMENT of 
the world. As God decreed from eternity the creation of things in 
time, so he decreed from eternity the particular ends of creatures, 
and their operation respecting those ends. Now, as there was need 
of his power to execute his decree of creation, there is also need of 
his power to execute his decree about the manner of government." 
All government is an act of the understanding, will, and power. 
Prudence to design belongs to the understanding ; the election of the 
means belongs to the will; and the accomplishment of the whole is 
an act of power. It is a hard matter to determine which is most 
necessary : wisdom stands in as much need of power to perfect, as 
power doth of wisdom, to model and draw out a scheme; though 
wisdom directs, power must effect. Wisdom and power are distinct 
things among men: a poor man in a cottage may have more pru- 
dence to advise, than a privy counsellor; and a prince more power 
to act, than wisdom to conduct. A pilot may direct though he be 
lame, and cannot climb the masts, and spread the sails: but God is 
wanting in nothing; neither in wisdom to design, nor in will to de- 
termine, nor in power to accomplish. His wisdom is not feeble, nor 
his power foolish: a feeble wisdom could not act what it would, and 
a foolish power would act more than it should. The power express- 
ed in his government is shadowed forth in the living creatures, which 
are God’s instruments in it. It is said, ‘‘Every one of them had 
four faces” (Ezek. i. 10); that of a man to signify wisdom ; of a lion, 
eagle, the strongest among birds, to signify their courage and strength 
to perform their offices. ‘This power is evident in the natural, moral, 
gracious government. There is a natural providence, which consists 
in the preservation of all things, propogation of them by corruptions 
and generations, and in a co-operation with them in their motions to 
attain their ends. Moral government is of the hearts and actions of 
men. Gracious government, as respecting the Church. 

First, His power is evident in natural government. 

1. In preservation. God is the great Father of the world, to 
nourish it as well as create it.s Man and beast would perish if there 
were not herbs for their food; and herbs would wither and perish, 
if the earth were not watered with fruitful showers. This some of 
the heathens acknowledged, in their worshipping God under the 
image of an ox, a useful creature, by reason of its strength, to which 
we owe so much of our food in corn. Hence, God is styled the 
“Preserver of man and beast” (Ps. xxxvi. 6). Hence, the Jews 
called God, Place ; because he is the subsistence of all things. By 


q Peirs, p. 111. r Suarez, Vol. I. lib, iii. cap. 10. 
* Daille, in 1 Cor. x. p. 102. t pip. 


* 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 45 


the same word whereby he gave being to things, he gives to them 
continuance and duration in being so much a term of time. As the 

were “created by his word,” they are supported by his word (Heb. 
i. 3). The same powerful fiat, ‘“ Let the earth bring forth grass” 
(Gen. 1.11), when the plants peeped upon man out of nothing, is 
expressed every spring, when they begin to lift up their heads from 
their naked roots and winter graves. ‘he resurrection of light every 
morning, the reviving the pleasure of all things to the eye; the wa- 
tering the valleys from the mountain springs; the curbing the natural 
appetite of the waters from covering the earth; every draught that 
the beasts drink, every lodging the fowls have, every bit of food for 
the sustenance of man and beast, is ascribed to the “ opening of his 
hand,” the diffusing of his power (Ps. civ. 27, &c.), as much as the 
first creation of things, and endowing them with their particular 
nature: whence the plants, which are so serviceable, are called ‘the 
trees of the Lord” (ver. 16), of Jehovah, that hath only being and 
power in himself. The whole Psalm is but the description of his 
preserving, as the first of Genesis is of his creating power. It is by 
this power angels have so many thousand years remained in the 
power of understanding and willing. By this power things distant 
in their natures have been joined together; a spiritual soul and a 
dusty body knit in a marriage knot. By this power the heavenly 
bodies have for so many ages rolled in their spheres, and the tumul- 
tuous elements have persisted in their order: by this hath the matter 
of the world been to this day continued, and as capable of entertain- 
ing forms as it was at the first creation. What an amazing sight 
would it be to see a man hold a pillar of the Exchange upon one of 
his fingers? What is this to the power of God, ‘who holds the 
waters in the hollow of his hand, metes out the heaven with a span, 
and weighs the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance” (Isa. 
xl. 12)? The preserving the earth from the violence of the sea is a 
plain instance of this power." How is that raging element kept pent 
within those lists where he first lodged it; continues its course in its 
channel without overflowing the earth, and dashing in pieces the 
lower part of the creation? ‘The natural situation of the water is to 
be above the earth, because it is lighter; and to be immediately under 
the air, because it is heavier than that thinner element. Who re- 
strains this natural quality of it, but that God that first formed it? 
The word of command at first, ‘‘ Hitherto shalt thou go, and no fur- 
ther,” keeps those waters linked together in their den, that they may 
not ravage the earth, but be useful to the inhabitants of it. And 
when once it finds a gap to enter, what power of earth can hinder its 
passage? How fruitless sometimes is all the art of man to send it 
to its proper channel, when once it hath spread its mighty waves 
over some countries, and trampled part of the inhabited earth under 
its feet? It hath triumphed in its victory, and withstood all the 
power of man to conquer its force. It is only the power of God that 
doth bridle it from spreading itself over the whole earth. And that 
his power might be more manifest, he hath set but a weak and small 
bank against it. Though he hath bounded it in some places by 

* Daille Melange, Part TI. p. 457. 


ll 
46 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


mighty rocks, which lift up their heads above it, yet in most places 
by feeble sand. How often is it seen in every stormy motion, when 
the waves boil high and roll furiously, as if they would swallow up 
all the neighboring houses upon the shore; when they come to touch 
those sandy limits, they bow their heads, fall flat, and sink into the 
lap whence they were raised, and seem to foam with anger that they 
can march no further, but must split themselves at so weak an ob- 
stacle! Can the sand be thought to be the cause of this? The 
weakness of it gives no footing to such a thought. Who can appre- 
hend, that an enraged army should retire upon the opposition of a 
straw in an infant’s hand? Is it the nature of the water? Its retire- 
ment is against the natural quality of it; pour but a little upon the 
ground, and you always see it spread itself. No cause can be ren- 
dered in nature; it is a standing monument of the power of God in 
the preservation of the world, and ought to be more taken notice of 
by us in this island, surrounded with it, than by some other countries 
in the world. 

(1.) We find nothing hath power to preserve itself. Doth not 
every creature upon earth require the assistance of some other for 
its maintenance? ‘Can the rush grow up without mire? can the 
flag grow up without water” (Job vui. 11)? Can man or beast main- 
tain itself without grain from the bowels of the earth? Would not 
every man tumble into the grave, without the aid of other creatures 
to nourish him? Whence do these creatures receive that virtue of 
supplying him nourishment, but from the sun and earth? and whence 
do they derive that virtue, but from the Creator of all things? And 
should he but slack his hand, how soon would they and all their 
qualities perish, and the links of the world fall in pieces, and dash 
one another into their first chaos and confusion! All creatures in- 
deed have an appetite to preserve themselves; they have some know]- 
edge of the outward means for their preservation ; so have irrational 
animals a natural instinct, as well as men have some skill to avoid 
things that are hurtful, and apply things that are helpful. But what 
thing in the world can preserve itself by an inward influx into its 
own being? All things want such a power without God’s fiat, ‘‘ Let 
it be so :” nothing but is destitute of such a power for its own preser- 
vation, as much as it is of a power for its own creation. Were there 
any true power for such a work, what need of so many external 
helps from things of an inferior nature to that which is preserved by 
them? No created thing hath a power to preserve any decayed 
being. Who can lay claim to such a virtue, as to recall a withering 
flower to its former beauty, to raise the head of a drooping plant, or 
put life into a gasping worm when it is expiring; or put impaired 
vitals into their former posture? Not a man upon earth, nor an 
angel in heaven, can pretend to such a virtue; they may be spec- 
tators, but not assisters, and are, in this case, physicians of no value. 

(2.) It is, therefore, the same Power preserves things which at first 
created them. The creature doth as much depend upon God, in the 
first instant of its being, for its preservation, as it did, when it was 
nothing, for its production and creation into being: as the continu- 
ance of a thought of our mind depends upon the power of our mind, 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. AT 


as well as the first framing of that thought.x There is a little differ- 
ence between creating and preserving power, as there is between the 
power of mine eye to begin an act of vision and continue that act of 
vision, as to cast my eye upon an object and continue it upon that 
object: as the first act is caused by the eye, so the duration of the act 
is preserved by the eye; shut the eye, and the act of vision perishes; 
divert the eye from that object, and that act of vision is exchanged 
for another. And, therefore, the preservation of things is commonly 
called a continual creation: and certainly it is no less, if we under- 
stand it of a preservation by an inward influence into the being of 
things. It is one and the same action invariably continued, and 
obtaining its force every moment; the same action whereby he 
created them of nothing, and which every moment hath a virtue to 
produce a thing out of nothing, if it were not yet extant in the 
world: it remains the same without any diminution throughout the 
whole time wherein anything doth remain in the world.y For all 
things would return to nothing, if God did not keep them up in the 
elevation and state to which he at first raised them by his creative 

ower (Acts xvu. 28): ‘In him we live, and move, and have our 

eing.” By him, or by the same Power whence we derived our 
being, are our lives maintained: as it was his Almighty Power 
whereby we were, after we had been nothing, so it is the same power 
whereby we now are, after he hath made us something. Certainly 
all things have no less a dependence on God than light upon the 
sun, which vanisheth and hides its head upon the withdrawing of the 
sun. And should God suspend that powerful Word, whereby he 
erected the frame of the world, it would sink down to what it was, 
before he commanded it to stand up. There needs no new act of 
power to reduce things to nothing, but the cessation of that Omnip- 
otent influx. When the appointed time set them for their being 
comes to a period, they faint and bend down their heads to their 
dissolution; they return to their elements, and perish (Ps. civ. 29): 
“Thou hidest thy face, and they are troubled: thou takest away 
their breath, they die, and return to their dust. That which was 
nothing cannot remain on this side nothing, but by the same Power 
that first called it out of nothing. As when God withdrew his con- 
curring power from the fire, its quality ceased to act upon the three 
children: so if he withdraws his sustaining power from the creature, 
its nature will cease to be. 

2. It appears in propagation. That powerful word (Gen. i. 22, 
23), “Increase and multiply,” pronounced at the first creation, hath 
spread itself over every part of the world; every animal in the 
world, in the formation of every one of them. From two of a kind, 
how great a number of individuals and single creatures have been 
multiplied, to cover the face of the earth in their continued succes- 
sions! What a world of plants spring up from the womb of a dry 
earth, moistened by the influence of a cloud, and hatched by the 
beams of the sun! How admirable an instance of his propagating 
power is it, that from a little seed a massy root should strike into 
the bowels of the earth, a tall body and thick branches, with leaves 

x Lessius de Perfect. Divin. p. 69. y Lessius de Snm. Bon. pp. 580—582. 


48 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


and flowers of various colors, should break through the surface of 
the earth, and mount up towards heaven, when in the seed you 
neither smell the scent, nor see any firmness of a tree, nor behold 
any of those colors which you view in the flowers that the ears pro- 
duce! A power not to be imitated by anycreature. How astonish- 
ing is it, that a small seed, whereof many will not amount to the 
weight of a grain, should spread itself into leaves, bark, fruit of a 
vast weight, and multiply itself into millions of seeds! What power 
is that, that from one man and woman hath multiplied families, and 
from families, stocked the world with people! Consider the living 
creatures, as formed in the womb of their several kinds; every one 
is a wonder of power. The Psalmist instanceth in the forming and 
propagation of man (Ps. cxxxix. 14): “I am fearfully and wonder- 
fully made; marvellous are thy works.” The forming of the parts 
distinctly in the womb, the bringing forth into the world every par- 
ticular member, is a roll of wonders, of power. That so fine a 
structure as the body of man should be polished in “the lower 
parts of the earth,” as he calls the womb (ver. 15), in so short a 
time, with members of a various form and usefulness, each laboring 
in their several functions! Can any man give an exact account of 
the manner ‘how the bones do grow in the womb” (Hecles. xi. 5)? 
It is unknown to the father, and no less hid from the mother, and 
the wisest men cannot search out the depth of it. It is one of the 
secret works of an Omnipotent Power, secret in the manner, though 
open in the effect. So that we must ascribe it to God, as Job doth, 

Thine hands have made me and fashioned me together round 
about” (Job x. 8). Thy hands which formed heaven, have formed 
every part, every member, and wrought me like a mighty workman. 
The heavens are said to be the ‘‘ work of God’s hands,” and man is 
here said to be no less. The forming and propagation of man from 
that earthy matter, is no less a wonder of power than the structure 
of the world from a rude and indisposed matter. A heathen philo- 
sopher descants elegantly upon it: “ Dost thou understand (my Bon) 
the forming of man in the womb; who erected that noble fabric: 
who carved the eyes, the crystal windows of light, and the con- 
ductors of the body; who bored the nostrils and ears, those loop- 
holes of scents and sounds; who stretched out and knit the sinews 
and ligaments for the fastening of every member; who cast the 
hollow veins, the channels of blood; set and strengthened the bones, 
the pillars and rafters of the body; who digged the pores, the sinks 
to expel the filth; who made the heart, the repository of the soul, 
and formed the lungs like a pipe? What mother, what father, 
wrought these things? No, none but the Almighty God, who made 
all things according to his pleasure; it is He who propagates this 
noble piece from a pile of dust. Who is born by his own advice; 
who gives stature, features, sense, wit, strength, speech, but God ?”# 
It is no less a wonder, that a little infant can live so long in a dark 
sink, in the midst of filth, without breathing; and the eduction of 
it out of the womb is no less a wonder than the forming, increase, 
nourishment of it in that cell. A wonder, that the life of the infant 

+ Trismegist, in Serm. Greek, in the Temple, p, 57. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 49 


is not the death of the mother, or the life of the mother the death 
of the infant. This little creature when it springs up from such 
small beginnings by the power of God, grows up to be one of the 
lords of the world, to have a dominion over the creatures, and pro- 
pagates its kind in the same manner: all this is unaccountable with- 
out having recourse to the power of God in the government of the 
creatures. And to add to this wonder, consider also what multi- 
tudes of formations and births there arg at one time all over the 
world, in every of which the finger of God is at work; and it will 
speak an unwearied power. | It is admirable in one man, more in 
a town of men, still more in a greater and larger kingdom, a vaster 
world; there is a birth for every hour in this city, were but 168 
born in a week, though the weekly bills mention more: what is 
this city to three kingdoms? what three kingdoms to a populous 
world? Eleven thousand and eighty will make one for every minute 
in the week; what is this to the weekly propagation in all the na- 
tions of the universe, besides the generation of all the living crea- 
tures in that space, which are the works of God’s fingers as well as 
man? What will be the result of this, but the notion of an uncon- 
ceivable, unwearied Almightiness, always active, always operating? 

8. It appears in the motions of all creatures. ‘“ All things live 
and move in him” (Acts xvi. 28); by the same power that creatures 
have their beings, they have their motions: they have not only a 
being by his powerful command, but they have their minutely mo- 
tion by his powerful concurrence. Nothing can act without the 
almighty influx of God, no more than it can exist without the crea- 
tive word of God. It is true indeed, the ordering of all motions to 
his holy ends, is an act of wisdom; but the motion itself, whereby 
those ends are attained, is a work of his power. 

(1). God, as the first cause, hath an influence into the motions of 
all second causes. As all the wheels in a clock are moved in their 
different motions by the force and strength of the principal and 
primary wheel; if there be any defect in that, or if that stand stall, 
all the rest languish and stand idle the same moment. All creatures 
are his instruments, his engines, and have no spirit, but what he 
gives, and what he assists. Whatsoever nature works, God works 
in nature; nature is the instrument, God is the supporter, director, 
mover of nature; that which the prophet saith in another case, may 
be the language of universal nature: ‘‘ Lord, thou hast wrought all 
- our work in us” (Isa. xxvi. 12). They are works subjectively, effi- 
ciently, assecond causes ; God’s works originally, concurrently. The 
sun moved not in the valley of Ajalon for the space of many hours, 
in the time of Joshua (Josh. x. 18); nor did the fire exercise its con- 
suming quality upon the three children, in Nebuchadnezzar’s fur- 
nace (Dan. ii. 25): he withdrew not his supporting power from their 
being, for then they had vanished, but his influencing power from 
their qualities, whereby their motion ceased, till he returned his in- 
fluential concurrence to them; which evidenceth, that without a per- 
petual derivation of Divine power, the sun could not run one stride 
or inch of its race, nor the fire devour one grain of light chaff, or 
an inch of straw. Nothing without his sustaining power can con- 

VOL. I1.—3 


50 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


tinue in being; nothing without his co-working power can exer- 
cise one mite of those qualities it is possessed of. All creatures are 
wound up by him, and his hand is constantly upon them, to keep 
them in perpetual motion. 

(2). Consider the variety of motions in a single creature. How 
many motions are there in the vital parts of a man, or in any other 
animal, which a man knows not, and is unable to number! The 
renewed motion of the lungs, the systoles and diastoles of the heart; 
the contractions and dilations of the heart, whereby it spouts out 
and takes in blood; the power of concoction in the stomach; the 
motion of the blood in the veins, &c., all which were not only settled 
by the powerful hand of God, but are upheld by the same, preserved 
and influenced in every distinct motion by that power that stamped 
them with that nature. ‘To every one of those there is not only the 
sustaining power of God holding up their natures, but the motive 
power of God concurring to every motion; for if we move in him 
as well as we live in him, then every particle of our motion is exer- 
cised by his concurring power, as well as every moment of our life 
supported by his preserving power. What an infinite variety of 
motions is there in the whole world in universal nature, to all which 
God concurs, all which he conducts, even the motions of the meanest 
as well as the greatest creatures, which demonstrate the indefatigable 
power of the governor! It is an Infinite Power which doth act in 
so many varieties, whereby the souls forms every thought, the 
tongue speaks every word, the body exerts every action. What an 
Infinite Power is that which presides over the birth of all things, 
concurs with the motion of the sap in the tree, rivers on the earth, 
clouds in the air, every drop of rain, fleece of snow, crack of thun- 
der! Not the least motion in the world, but is under an actual in- 
fluence of this Almighty Mover. And lest any should scruple the 
concurrence of God to so many varieties of the creature’s motion, as 
a thing utterly inconceivable, let them consider the sun, a natural 
image and shadow of the perfections of God; doth not the power of 
that finite creature extend itself to various objects at the same mo- 
ment of time? How many insects doth it animate, as flies, &c., at 
the same moment throughout the world! How many several plants 
doth it erect at its appearance in the spring, whose roots lay mourn- 
ing in the earth all the foregoing winter! What multitudes of 
spires of grass, and nobler flowers, doth it midwife in the same hour! 
It warms the air, melts the blood, cherishes living creatures of various 
kinds, in distinct places, without tiring: and shall the God of this 
sun be less than his creature ? 

(3.) And since I speak of the sun, consider the power of God in 
the motion of it. The vastness of the sun is computed to be, at the 
least, 166 times bigger than the earth, and its distance from the 
earth, some tell us, to be about 4,000,000 of miles;+ whence it fol- 
lows, that it is whirled about the world with that swiftness, that in 
the space of an hour it runs 1,000,000 of miles, which is as much as 
if it should move round about the surface of the earth fifty times im 
one hour; which vastness exceeds the swiftness of a bullet shot out 

2 A Lapide, in 1 cap. Gen. xvi. Lessius, de Perfect. Divin, pp. 90, 91. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 5k 


of a cannon, which is computed to fly not above three miles in a 
minute :> so that the sun runs further in one hour’s space, than a 
bullet can in 5,000, if it were kept in motion; so that if it were near 
the earth, the swiftness of its motion would shatter the whole frame 
of the world, and dash it in pieces; so that the Psalmist may well 
say, “It runs a race like a strong man” (Ps. xix. 5). W hat an in- 
comprehensible Power is that which hath communicated such a 
strength and swiftness to the sun, and doth daily influence its mo- 
tion; especially since after all those years of its motion, wherein 
one would think it should have spent itself, we behold it every day 
as vigorous as Adam did in Paradise, without limping, without shat- 
tering itself, or losing any thing of its natural spirits in its unwearied 
motion. How great must that power be, which hath kept this great 
body so entire, and thus swiftly moves it every day! Is it not now 
an argument of omnipotency, to keep all the strimgs of nature in 
tune; to wind them up to a due pitch for the harmony he intended 
by them; to keep things that are contrary from that confusion they 
would naturally fall into; to prevent those jarrings which would 
naturally result from their various and snarling qualities; to preserve 
every being in its true nature; to propagate every kind of creature; 
order all the operations, even the meanest of them, when there are 
such innumerable varieties? But let us consider, that this power ot 
preserving things in their station and motion, and the renewing of 
them, is more stupendous than that which we commonly call mirac- 
ulous. We call those miracles, which are wrought out of the track 
of nature, and contrary to the usual stream and current of it ; which 
men wonder at, because they seldom see them, and hear of them as 
things rarely brought forth in the world; when the truth is, there 
.is more of power expressed in the ordinary station and motion of 
natural causes than in those extraordinary exertings of power. Is 
not more power signalized in that whirling motion of the sun every 
hour for so many ages, than in the suspending of its motion one 
day, as it was in the days of Joshua? ‘hat fire should continually 
ravage and consume, and greedily swallow up every thing that 1s 
offered to it, seems to be the effect of as admirable a power, as the 
stopping of its appetite a few moments, as in the case of the three 
children. Is not the rising of some small seeds from the ground, 
with a multiplication of their numerous posterity, an effect of as 
great a power, as our Saviour’s feeding many thousands with a few 
loaves, by a secret augmentation of them?¢ Is not the chemical 
producing so pleasant and delicious a fruit as the grape, from a dry 
earth, insipid rain, and a sour vine, as admirable a token of Divine 
power, as our Saviour’s turning water into wine? Is not the cure 
of diseases by the application of a simple inconsiderable weed, or a 
slight infusion, as wonderful in itself, as the cure of it by a power- 
ful weed? What if it be naturally designed to heal; what is that 
nature, who gave that nature, who maintains that nature, who con- 
ducts it, co-operates with it? Doth it work of itself, and by its own 
streneth ? why not then equally in all, in one as well as another ? 


> Lessius, de Providen, p. 638. Voss, de Idol. lib, ii. cap. 2. 
¢ Faucher sur Act. Vol. If. p. 47. 


52, CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


Miracles, indeed, affect more, because they testify the immediate 
operation of God, without the concurrence of second causes; not 
i there is more of the power of God shining in them than in the 
other, 

Secondly, This power is evident in moral government. 

1. In the restraint of the malicious nature of the devil. Since 
Satan hath the power of an angel, and the malice of a devil, what 
safety would there be for our persons from destruction, what secur- 
ity for our goods from rifling, by this invisible, potent, and envious 
spirit, if his power were not restrained, and his malice curbed, by 
One more mighty than himself? How much doth he envy God the 
glory of his creation; and man, the use and benefit of it! How 
desirous would he be, in regard of his passion, how able in regard 
of his strength and subtlety, to overthrow or infect all worship, but 
what was directed to himself; to manage all things according to his 
lusts, turn all things topsy-turvy, plague the world, burn cities, 
houses, plunder us of the supports of nature, waste kinedoms, &c. ; 
if he were not held in a chain, as a ravenous lion, or a furious wild 
horse, by the Creator and Governor of the world! What remedy 
could be used by man against the activity of this unseen and swift 
spint? The world could not subsist under his malice; he would 
practise the same things upon all as he did upon Job, when he had 
got leave from his Governor; turn the swords of men into one an- 
other’s bowels; send fire from heaven upon the fruits of the earth 
and the cattle intended for the use of man; raise winds, to shake and 
tear our houses upon our heads; daub our bodies with scalbs and 
boils, and let all the humors in our blood loose upon us. He that 
envied Adam a paradise, doth envy us the pleasure of enjoying its 
out-works. If we were not destroyed by him, we should live in a 
continued vexation by spectrums and apparitions, affrighting sounds 
and noise, as some think the Egyptians did in that three days’ dark- 
ness: he would be alway winnowing us, as he desired to winnow 
Peter (Luke xxi. 81). But God over-masters his strength, that he 
cannot move a hair’s breadth beyond his tedder; not only is he un- 
able to touch an upright Job, but to lay his fingers upen one of the 
unbelieving Gadarenes forbidden and filthy swine without special 
license (Matt. viii. 31). When he is cast out of one place, he walks 
“through dry places seeking rest” (Luke xi. 24), new objects for his 
malicious designs,—but finding none, till God lets loose the reins 
upon him for anew employment. Though Satan’s power be great, 
yet God suffers him not to tempt as much as his diabolical appetite 
would, but as much as Divine wisdom thinks fit; and the Divine 
power tempers the other’s active malice, and gives the creature vic- 
tory, where the enemy intended spoil and captivity. How much 
stronger is God, than all the legions of hell; as he that holds a 
“strong man” (Luke x1. 22) from effecting his purpose, testifies more 
ability than his adversary! How doth he lock him up for a ‘“thou- 
sand years” (Rev. xx. 3) in a pound, which he cannot leap over! and 
this restraint is wrought partly by blinding the devil in his designs, 
partly by denying him concourse to his motion; as he hindered the 
active quality of the fire upon the three children, by withdrawing 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 53 


his power, which was necessary to the motion of it; and his power 
is as necessary for the motion of the devil, as for that of any other 
creature: sometimes he makes him to confess him against his own 
interest, as Apollo’s oracle confessed.4 And though when the devil 
was cast out of the possessed person, he publicly owned Christ to be 
the “ Holy one of God” (Mark 1. 24), to render him suspected by the 
people of having commerce with the unclean spirits; yet this he 
could not do without the leave and permission of God, that the 
power of Christ, in stopping his mouth and imposing silence upon 
him, might be evidenced; and that it reaches to the gates of hell, as 
well as to the quieting of winds and waves. This isa part of the 
strength, as well as the wisdom of God, that ‘‘the deceived and the 
deceiver are his” (Job xii. 16): wisdom to defeat, and power to over- 
rule his most malicious designs, to his own glory. 

2. In the restraint of the natural corruption of men. Since the 
ympetus of original corruption runs in the blood, conveyed down 
from Adam to the veins of all his posterity, and universally diffused 
in all mankind; what wreck and havoc would it make in the world, 
if it were not suppressed by this Divine power which presides over 
the hearts of men! Man is so wretched by nature, that nothing but 
what is vile and pernicious can drop from him. Man “ drinks ini- 
quity lke water,” being, by nature, ‘abominable and filthy” (Job 
xv. 16). He greedily swallows all matter for iniquity, everything 
suitable to the mire and poison in his nature, and would sprout it 
out with all fierceness and insolence. God himself gives us the 
description of man’s nature (Gen. vi. 5), that he hath not one good 
imagination at any time; and the apostle from the Psalmist dilates 
and comments upon it (Rom. i. 10, &.) “There is none righteous ; 
no, not one; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness, their feet 
are swift to shed blood,” &. This corruption is equal in all, natural 
in all; itis not more poisonous or more fierce in one man, than 
in another. The root of all men is the same; all the branches 
therefore do equally possess the villanous nature of the root. No 
child of Adam can, by natural descent, be better than Adam, or 
have less of baseness, and vileness, and venom, than Adam. How 
fruitful would this loathsome lake be in all kind of streams! What 
unbridled licentiousness and headstrong fury would triumph in the 
world, if the power of God did not interpose itself to lock down the 
flood-gates of it! What rooting up of human society would there 
be! how would the world be drenched in blood, the number of 
malefactors be greater than that of apprehenders and punishers! 
How would the prints of natural laws be rased out of the heart, if 
God should leave human nature to itself! Who can read the first 
chapter of Romans, (verses 24 to 29), without acknowledging this 
truth? where there is a catalogue of those villanies which followed 
upon God’s pulling up the sluices, and letting the malignity of their 
inward corruption have its natural course! If God did not hold 
back the fury of man, his garden would be overrun, his vine rooted 
up; the inclinations of men would hurry them to the worst of 
wickedness. How great is that Power that curbs, bridles, or changes 

4 Ceeteros deos cereos esse, &e. Grot. Verit, Rel. lib, 4, 


54 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


as many headstrong horses at once, and every minute, as there are 
sons of Adam upon the earth? The “floods lift up their waves; 
the Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea, 
than the mighty waves of the sea” (Ps. xciii. 3, 4); that doth hush 
and pen in the turbulent passions of men. 

3. In the orderig and framing the hearts of men to his own ends. 
That must be an Omnipotent hand that grasps and contains the hearts 
of all men; the heart of the meanest person, as well as of the most 
towering angel, and turns them as he pleases, and makes them some- 
time ignorantly, sometime knowingly, concur to the accomplishment 
of his own purposes! When the hearts of men are so numerous, 
their thoughts so various and different from one another, yet he hath 
a key to those millions of hearts, and with infinite power, guided by 
as infinite wisdom, he draws them into what channels he pleases, for 
the gaining his own ends. Though the Jews had imbrued their 
hands in the blood of our Saviour, and their rage was yet reeking- 
hot against his followers, God bridled their fury in the church’s in- 
‘fancy, till it had got some strength, and cast a terror upon them by 
the wonders wrought by the apostles (Acts 1. 48): “ And fear came 
upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were done by the 
apostles.” Was there not the same reason in the nature of the works 
our Saviour wrought, to point them to the finger of God, and calm 
their rage? Yet did not the power of God work upon their passions 
in those miracles, nor stop the impetuousness of the corruption resi- 
dent in their hearts. Yet now those who had the boldness to attack 
the Son of God and nail him to the cross, are frighted at the appear- 
ance of twelve unarmed apostles; as the sea seems to be afraid when 
it approacheth the bounds of the feeble sand. How did God bend 
the hearts of the Egyptians to the Israelites, and turn them to that 
point, as to lend their most costly vessels, their precious jewels, and 
rich garments, to supply those whom they had just before tyrant- 
cally loaded with their chains (Exod. iti. 21, 22)! When a great 
part of an army came upon Jehoshaphat, to dispatch him into another 
world, how doth God, in a trice, touch their hearts, and move them, 
by a secret instinct, at once to depart from him (1 Chron, xviii. 31)! 
as if you should see a numerous sight of birds in a moment turn 
wing another way, by a sudden and joint consent. When he gave 
Saul a kingdom, he gave him a spirit fit for government, “and gave 
him another heart” (1 Sam. x. 9); and brought the people to submit 
to his yoke, who, a little before, wandered about the land upon no 
nobler employment than the seeking of asses. It is no small remark 
of the power of God, to make a number of strong and discontented 
persons, and desirous enough of liberty, to bend their necks under 
the yoke of government, and submit to the authority of one, and 
that of their own nature, often weaker and unwiser than the most of 
them, and many times an oppressor and invader of their rights. 
Upon this account David calls God “his fortress, tower, shield” (Ps. 
oxliv, 2); all terms of strength in subduing the people under him. 
It is the mighty hand of God that links princes and people together 
in the bands of government. The same hand that assuageth the 
waves of the sea, suppresseth the tumults of the people. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 5d 


Thirdly, It appears in his gracious and judicial government. 

1. In his gracious government. In the deliverance of his church: 
he is the “strength of Israel” (1 Sam. xv. 29), and hath protected 
his little flock in the midst of wolves; and maintained their stand- 
ing, when the strongest kingdoms have sunk, and the best jointed 
states have been broken in pieces; when judgments have ravaged 
countries, and torn up the mighty, as a tempestuous wind hath often 
done the tallest trees, which seemed to threaten heaven with their 
tops, and dare the storm with the depth of their roots, when yet the 
vine and rose-bushes have stood firm, and been seen in their beauty 
next morning, The state of the church hath outlived the most 
flourishing monarchies, when there hath been a mighty knot of ad- 
versaries against her; when the bulls of Bashan have pushed her, 
and the whole tribe of the dragon have sharpened their weapons, 
and edged their malice; when the voice was strong, and the hopes 
high to rase her foundation even with the ground; when hell hath 
roared; when the wit of the world hath contrived, and the strength 
of the world hath attempted her ruin; when decrees have been 
passed against her, and the powers of the world armed for the exe- 
cution of them; when her friends have drooped and skulked in cor- 
ners; when there was no eye to pity, and no hand to assist, help 
hath come from heaven; her enemies have been defeated; kings 
have brought gifts to her, and reared her; tears have been wiped off 
her cheeks, and her very enemies, by an unseen power, have been 
forced to court her whom before they would have devoured quick. 
The devil and his armies have sneaked into their den, and the church 
hath triumphed when she hath been upon the brink of the grave. 
Thus did God send a mighty angel to be the executioner of Senna- 
cherib’s army, and the protector of Jerusalem, who run his sword 
into the hearts of eighty thousand (2 Kings xix. 35), when they were 
ready to swallow up his beloved city. When the knife was at the 
throats of the Jews, in Shushan (Esther viii.), by a powerful hand it 
was turned into the hearts of their enemies. With what an out- 
stretched arm were the Israelites freed from the Egyptian yoke (Deut. 
iv. 84)! When Pharaoh had mustered a great army to pursue them, 
assisted with six hundred chariots of war, the Red Sea obstructed 
their passage before, and an enraged enemy trod on their rear ; when 
the fearful Israelites despaired of deliverance, and the insolent Kgyp- , 
tian assured himself of his revenge, God stretches out his irresistible 
arm to defeat the enemy, and assist his people ; he strikes down the 
wolves, and preserves the flock. God restrained the Keyptian en- 
mity against the Israelites till they were at the brink of the Red Sea, 
and then lets them follow their humor, and pursue the fugitives, that 
his power might more gloriously shine forth in the deliverance of 
the one, and the destruction of the other. God might have brought 
Israel out of Egypt in the time of those kings that had remembered 
the good service of Joseph to their country, but he leaves them till 
the reign of a cruel tyrant, suffers them to be slaves, that they might 
by his sole power, be conquerors, which had had no appearancé h 
there been a willing dismission of them at the first summons (Hixod. 
ix. 16); “In very deed for this cause have I raised thee up, for to 


56 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


shew my power, and that my name might be declared throughout 
all the earth. I have permitted thee to rise up against my people, 
and keep them in captivity, that thou mightest be an occasion for the 
manifestation of my power in their rescue; and whilst thou art ob- 
stinate to enslave them, I will stretch out my arm to deliver them, 
and make my name famous among the Gentiles, in the wreck of thee 
and thy host in the Red Sea. The deliverance of the church hath 
not been in one age, or in one part of the world, but God hath sig- 
nalized his power in all kingdoms where she hath had a footing: as 
he hath guided her in all places by one rule, animated her by one 
spirit, so he hath protected her by the same arm of power. When 
the Noman emperors bandied all their force against her, for about 
three hundred years, they were further from effecting her ruin at the 
end than when they first attempted it; the church grew under their 
sword, and was hatched under the wings of the Roman eagle, which 
were spread to destroy her The ark was elevated by the deluge, 
and the waters the devil poured out to drown her did but slime the 
earth for a new increase of her. She hath sometimes been beaten 
down, and, like Lazarus, hath seemed to be in the grave for some 
days, that the power of God might be more visible in her sudden re- 
surrection, and lifting up her head above the throne of her persecu- 
tors. 

2. In his judicial proceedings. The deluge was no small testimo- 
ny of his power, in opening the cisterns of heaven, and pulling up 
the sluices of the sea. He doth but call for the waters of the sea, 
and they ‘pour themselves upon the face of the earth” (Amos ix. 6.) 
In forty days’ time the waters overtopped the highest mountains fif- 
teen cubits (Gen. vii. 17—20); and by the same power he afterwards 
reduced the sea to its proper channel, as a roaring lion into his den. 
A shower of fire from heaven, upon Sodom, and the cities of the 
plain, was a signal display of his power, either in creating it on the 
sudden, for the execution of his righteous sentence, or sending down 
the element of fire, contrary to its nature, which affects ascent, for 
the punishment of rebels against the light of nature. How often 
hath he ruined the most flourishing monarchies, led princes away 
spoiled, and overthrown the mighty, which Job makes an argument 
of his strength Job xi. 13, 14). Troops of unknown people, the 
Goths and Vandals, broke the Romans, a warlike people, and hurled 
down all before them. They could not have had the thought to suc- 
ceed in such an attempt, unless God had given them strength and 
motion for the executing his judicial vengeance upon the people of 
his wrath. How did he evidence his power, by daubing the throne 
of Pharaoh, and his chamber of presence, as well as the houses of 
his subjects, with the slime of frogs (Exod. viii. 8); turning their 
waters into blood, and their dust into biting lice (Exod. vu. 20) ; 
raising his militia of locusts against them; causing a three days’ 
darkness without stopping the motion of the sun; taking off their 
first-born, the excellency of their strength, in a night, by the stroke 
of the angel’s sword! He takes off the chariot wheels of Pharaoh, 
and presents him with a destruction where he expected a victory ; 
brings those waves over the heads of him and his host, which stood 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 57 


firm as marble walls for the safety of his people; the sea is made to 
swallow them up, that durst not, by the order of their Governor, 
touch the Israelites: it only sprinkled the one as a type of baptism, 
and drowned the other as an image of hell. Thus he made it both 
a deliverer and a revenger, the instrument of an offensive and de- 
fensive war (Isa. xl. 28, 24); ‘He brings princes to nothing, and 
makes the judges of the earth as vanity.” Great monarchs have, by 
his power, been hurled from their thrones and their sceptres, like 
Venice-glasses, broken before their faces, and they been advanced 
that have had the least hopes of grandeur. He hath plucked up ce- 
dars by the roots, lopped off the branches, and set a shrub to grow 
up in the place; dissolved rocks, and established bubbles (Luke 1. 
52): “He hath showed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the 
proud in the imagination of their hearts; he hath put down the 
mighty from their seat, and exalted them of low degree.”—And 
these things he doth magnify his power in :— 

(1.) By ordering the nature of creatures as he pleases. By re- 
straining their force, or guiding their motions. The restraint of the 
destructive qualities of the creatures argues as great a power as the 
change of their natures, yea, and a greater. The qualities of crea- 
tures may be changed by art and composition, as in the preparing of 
medicines; but what but a Divine Power could restrain the opera- 
tion of the fire from the three children, while it retained its heat and 
burning quality in Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace? The operation was 
curbed while its nature was preserved. All creatures are called his 
host, because he marshals and ranks them as an army to serve his 
purposes. ‘The whole scheme of nature is ready to favor men when 
God orders it, and ready to punish men when God commissions it. 
He gave the Red Sea but a check, and it obeyed his voice (Ps. evi. 
9): “ He rebuked the Red Sea also, and it was dried up;” the mo- 
tion of it ceased, and the waters of it were ranged as defensive walls, 
to secure the march of his people: and at the motion of the hand of 
Moses, the servant of the Lord, the sea recovered its violence, and 
the walls that were framed came tumbling down upon the Egyp- 
tian’s heads (Hixod. xiv. 27). The Creator of nature is not led by 
the necessity of nature: he that settled the order of nature, can 
change or restrain the order of nature according to his sovereign 
pleasure. The most necessary and useful creatures he can use as in- 
struments of his vengeance: water is necessary to cleanse, and by 
that he can deface a world; fire is necessary to warm, and by that 
he can burn a Sodom: from the water he formed the fowl (Gen. i. 
21), and by that he dissolves them in the deluge; fire or heat is 
necessary to the generation of creatures, and by that he ruins the 
cities of the plain. He orders all as he pleases, to perform every 
tittle and punctilio of his purpose. The sea observed him so exactly, 
that it drowned not one Israelite, nor saved one Egyptian (Ps. evi. 
11). There was not one of them left. And to perfect the Israelites’ 
deliverance, he followed them with testimonies of his power above 
the strength of nature. When they wanted drink, he orders Moses 
to strike a rock, and the rock spouts a river, and a channel is formed 
for it to attend them in their journey. When they wanted bread, he 


58 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


dressed manna for them in the heavens, and sent it to their tables in 
the desert. When he would declare his strength, he calls to the 
heavens to pour down righteousness, and to the earth to bring forth 
salvation (Isa. xlv. 8). Though God had created righteousness or 
deliverance for the Jews in Babylon, yet he calls to the heavens and 
the earth to be assistant to the design of Cyrus, whom he had raised 
for that purpose, as he speaks in the beginning of the chapter (verses 
1—4). As God created man for a supernatural end, and all creatures 
for man as their immediate end, so he makes them, according to op- 
oases subservient to that supernatural end of man, for which 
re created him. He that spans the heavens with his fist, can shoot 
all creatures like an arrow, to hit what mark he pleases. He that 
spread the heavens and the earth by a word, and can by a word fold 
them up more easily than a man can a garment (Heb. 1. 12), can 
order the streams of nature; cannot he work without nature as well 
as with it, beyond nature, contrary to nature, that can, as it were, 
fillip nature with his finger into that nothing whence he drew it; 
who can cast down the sun from his throne, clap the distinguished 
parts of the world together, and make them march in the same order 
to their confusion, as they did in their creation: who can jumble the 
whole frame together, and, by a word, dissolve the pillars of the 
world, and make the fabric lie in a ruinous heap ? 

(2.) In effecting his purposes by small means: in making use of 
the meanest creatures. As the power of God is seen in the creation 
of the smallest creatures, and assembling so many perfections in the 
little body of an insect, as an ant, or spider, so his power is not less 
magnified in the use he makes of them. As he magnifies his wis- 
dom, by using ignorant instruments, so he exalts his power, by em- 
ploying weak instruments in his service: the meanness and imper- 
fection of the matter sets off the excellency of the workman; so the 
weakness of the instrument is no foil to the power of the principal 
Agent. When God hath effected things by means in the Scripture, 
he hath usually brought about his purposes by weak instruments. 
Moses, a fugitive from Egypt, and Aaron a captive in it, are the in- 
struments of the Israelites’ deliverance. By the motion of Moses’ 
rod, he works wonders in the court of Pharaoh, and summons up his 
judgments against him. He brought down Pharaoh’s stomach for a 
while, by a squadron of lice and locusts, wherein Divine power was 
more seen, than if Moses had brought him to his own articles by a 
multitude of warlike troops. The fall of the walls of Jericho by 
the sound of rams’ horns, was a more glorious character of God's 
power, than if Joshua had battered it down with a hundred of war- 
like engines (Josh vi. 20). Thus the great army of the Midianites, 
which lay as grasshoppers upon the ground, were routed by Gideon 
in the head of three hundred men; and Goliath, a giant, laid level 
with the ground by David, a stripling, by the force of a sling: a 
thousand Philistines dispatched out of the world by the jaw-bone of 
an ass in the hand of Samson. He can master a stout nation by an 
army of locusts, and render the teeth of those little imsects as de- 
structive as the teeth, yea, the strongest teeth, the cheek-teeth, of a 
great lion (Joel i. 6, 7). The thunderbolt, which produces some- 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 59 


times dreadful effects, is compacted of little atoms which fly in the 
air, small vapors drawn up by the sun, and mixed with other sul- 
phurous matter and petrifying juice. Nothing is so weak, but his 
strength can make victorious; nothing so small, but by his power 
he can accomplish his great ends by it; nothing so vile, but his 
might can conduct to his glory; and no nation so mighty, but he 
can waste and enfeeble by the meanest creatures. God is great in 
power in the greatest things, and not little in the smallest ; his power 
in the minutest creatures which he uses for his service, surmounts 
the force of our understanding. 

THIRDLY. The power of God appears in REDEMPTION. As our 
Saviour is called the Wisdom of God, so he is called the Power of 
God (1 Cor. i. 24). The arm of Power was lifted up as high as the 
designs of Wisdom were laid deep: as this way of redemption could 
not be contrived but by an Infinite Wisdom, so it could not be ac- 
complished but by an Infinite Power. None but God could shape 
such a design, and none but God could effect it. The Divine Power 
in temporal deliverances, and freedom from the slavery of human 
oppressors, vails to that which glitters in redemption; whereby the 
devil is defeated in his designs, stripped of his spoils, and yoked in 
his strength. The power of God in creation requires not those de- 
grees of admiration, as in redemption. In creation, the world was 
erected from nothing; as there was nothing to act, so there was 
nothing to oppose; no victorious devil was in that to be subdued; 
no thundering law to be silenced; no death to be conquered; no 
transgression to be pardoned and rooted out; no hell to be shut; no 
ignominious death upon the cross to be suffered. It had been, in 
the nature of the thing, an easier thing to Divine Power to have 
created a new world than repaired a broken, and purified a polluted 
one. This is the most admirable work that ever God brought forth 
in the world, greater than all the marks of his power in the first creation. 

And this will appear, I In the Person redeeming. IJ. In the 
publication and propagation of the doctrine of redemption. JI. In 
the application of redemption. 

I. In the Person redeeming. rst, In his conception. 

1. He was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the 
Virgin (Luke i. 85): “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and 
the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee:” which act is ex- 
pressed to be the effect of the infinite power of God; and it ex- 
presses the supernatural manner of the forming the humanity of 
our Saviour, and signifies not the Divine nature of Christ infusing 
itself into the womb of the virgin; for the angel refers it to the 
manner of the operation of the Holy Ghost in the producing the 
human nature of Christ, and not to the nature assuming that hu- 
manity into union with itself. The Holy Ghost, or the Third Per- 
son in the Trinity, overshadowed the virgin, and by a creative act 
framed the humanity of Christ, and united it to the Divinity. It is, 
therefore, expressed by a word of the same import with that used in 
Gen. i. 2, “The Spirit moved upon the face of the waters,” which 
signifies (as it were) a brooding upon the chaos, shadowing It with 
his wings, as hens sit upon their eggs, to form them and hatch them 


60 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


into animals; or else it is an allusion to the “cloud which covered 
the tent of the congregation, when the glory of the Lord filled the 
tabernacle” (Hixod. xl. 34). It was not such a creative act as we call 
immediate, which is a production out of nothing; but a mediate 
creation, sich as God’s bringing things into form out of the first 
matter, which had nothing but an obediential or passive disposition 
to whatsoever stamp the powerful wisdom of God should imprint 
upon it. So the substance of the Virgin had no active, but only a 
passive disposition to this work: the matter of the body was earthy, 
the substance of the virgin; the forming of it was heavenly, the 
Holy Ghost working npon that matter. And therefore when it is 
said, that “she was found with child of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. i. 18), 
it is to be understood of the efficacy of the Holy Ghost, not of the 
substance of the Holy Ghost. The matter was natural, but the man- 
ner of conceiving was in a supernatural way, above the methods of 
nature. In reference to the active principle the Redeemer is called 
in the prophecy (Isa. iv. 2), ‘The branch of the Lord,” in regard of 
the Divine hand that planted him: in respect to the passive princi- 
ple, the fruit of the earth, in regard of the womb that bare him; and 
therefore said to be ‘‘made of a woman” (Gal. iv. 4). That part of 
the flesh of the virgin whereof the human nature of Christ was made, 
was refined and purified from corruption by the overshadowing of 
the Holy Ghost, as a skilful workman separates the dross from the 
gold: our Saviour is therefore called, “ that holy thing” (Luke i. 35), 
though born of the virgin: he was necessarily some way to descend 
from Adam. God, indeed, might have created his body out of 
nothing, or have formed it (as he did Adam’s) out of the dust of the 
ground: but had he been thus extraordinarily formed, and not pro- 
peri from Adam, though he had been a man lke one of us, yet 

e would not have been of kin to us, because it would not have been 
a nature derived from Adam, the common parent of us all. It was 
therefore necessary to an affinity with us, not only that he should 
have the same human nature, but that it should flow from the same 
principle, and be propagated to him.e But now, by this way of 
producing the humanity of Christ of the substance of the virgin, he 
was in Adam (say some) corporally, but not seminally; of the sub- 
stance of Adam, ora daughter of Adam, but not of the seed of Adam: 
and so he is of the same nature that had sinned, and so what he did 
and suffered may be imputed to us; which, had he been created as 
Adam, could not be claimed in a legal and judicial way. 

2. It was not convenient he should be born in the common order 
of nature, of father and mother: for whosoever is so born is polluted. 
‘A clean thing cannot be brought out of an unclean” (Job xiv. 4). 
And our Saviour had been incapable of being a redeemer, had he 
been tainted with the least spot of our nature, but would have stood 
in need of redemption himself. Besides, it had been inconsistent 
with the holiness of the Divine nature, to have assumed a tainted 
and defiled body. He that was the fountain of blessedness to all 
nations, was not to be subject to the curse of the law for himself; 
which he would have been, had he been conceived in an ordinary 

e Amyrald. in Symbol. p. 103, ce. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 61 


way. He that was to overturn the devil’s empire, was not to be any 
way captive under the devil’s power, as a creature under the curse; 
nor could he be able to break the serpent’s head, had he been tainted 
with the serpent’s breath. Again, supposing that Almighty God by 
his divine power had so ordered the matter, and so perfectly sanc- 
tified an earthly father and mother from all original spot, that the 
human nature might have been transmitted immaculate to him, as 
well as the Holy Ghost did purge that part of the flesh of the virgin 
of which the body of Christ was made, yet 1t was not convenient 
that that person, that was God blessed for ever as well as man, par- 
taking of our nature, should have a conception in the same manner 
as ours, but different, and in some measure conformable to the in- 
finite dignity of his person: which could not have been, had not a 
supernatural power and a Divine person been concerned as an active 
principle in it; besides, such a birth had not been agreeable to the 
first promise, which calls him ‘“‘the Seed of the woman” (Gen. 1. 15), 
not of the man; and so the veracity of God had suffered some detri- 
ment: the Seed of the woman only is set in opposition to the seed 
of the serpent. 

3. By this manner of conception the holiness of his nature is se- 
cured, and his fitness for his office is atsured to us. It is now a pure 
and unpolluted humanity that is the temple and tabernacle of the 
Divinity: the fulness of the Godhead dwells in him bodily, and 
dwells in him holly. His humanity is supernaturalized and elevated 
by the activity of the Holy Ghost, hatching the flesh of the virgin 
into man, as the chaos into a world. Though we read of some sanc- 
tified from the womb, it was not a pure and perfect holiness; it was 
like the light of fire mixed with smoke, an mfused holiness accom- 
panied with a natural taint: but the holiness of the Redeemer by this 
conception, is like the light of the sun, pure, and without spot. The 
Spirit of holiness supplying the place of a father in the way of crea- 
tion. His fitness for his office is also assured to us; for being born 
of the virgin, one of our nature, but conceived by the Spirit of a 
Divine person, the guilt of our sins may be imputed to him because 
of our nature, without the stain of sin inherent in him; because of 
his supernatural conception he is capable, as one of kin to us, to bear 
our curse without being touched by our taint. By this means our 
sinful nature is assumed without sin in that nature which was as- 
sumed by him: “flesh he hath, but not sinful flesh” (Rom. viii. 8). 
Real flesh, but not really sinful, only by way of imputation. Nothing 
but the power of God 1s evident in this whole work: by ordinary 
laws and the course of nature a virgin could not bear a son: nothing 
but a supernatural and almighty grace could intervene to make so 
holy and perfect a conjunction. The generation of others, in an 
ordinary way, is by male and female: but the virgin is overshadowed 
by the Spirit and power of the Highest.f Man only is the product 
of natural generation; this which is born of the virgin is the holy 
thing, the Son of God. In other generations, a rational soul is only 
united to a material body: but in this, the Divine nature is united 
with the human in one person by an indissoluble union. 

f Amyrant. sur Timole, p. 292. 


62 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


The Second act of power in the person redeeming, is the vnion of 
the two natures, the Divine and human. The designing indeed of 
this was an act of wisdom; but the accomplishing it was an act of 
power. 

1. There is in this redeeming person a union of two natures. He 
is God and man in one person (Heb. i. 8, 9). ‘‘Thy throne, O God, 
is for ever and ever: God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with 
the oil of gladness,” &. The Son is called God, having a throne for 
ever and ever, and the unction speaks him man: the Godhead can- 
not be anointed, nor hath any fellows. Humanity and Divinity are 
ascribed to him (Rom. i. 8, 4). ‘‘ He was of the seed of David ac- 
cording to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God, by his resur- 
rection from the dead.” The Divinity and humanity are both pro- 
phetically joined (Zech. xii. 10), “I will pour out my Spirit;” the 
pouring forth the Spirit is an act only of Divine grace and power. 
“ And they shall look upon me whom they have pierced ;” the same 
person pours forth the Spirit as God, and is pierced as man. “The 
Word was made flesh” (John 1. 14). Word from eternity was made 
flesh in time; Word and flesh in one person; a great God, and a 
little infant. 

2. The terms of this union were infinitely distant. What greater 
distance can there be than between the Deity and humanity, between 
the Creator and a creature? Can youimagine the distance between 
eternity and time, Infinite Power and miserable infirmity, an immor- 
tal spirit and dying flesh, the highest Being and nothing? yet these 
are espoused. A God of unmixed blessedness is linked personally 
with a man of perpetual sorrows: life incapable to die, joined to a 
body in that economy incapable to live without dying first; infinite 
purity, and a reputed sinner; eternal blessedness with a cursed 
nature, Almightiness and weakness, omniscience and ignorance, im- 
mutability and changeableness, incomprehensibleness and compre- 
hensibility ; that which cannot be comprehended, and that which 
can be comprehended; that which is entirely independent, and that 
which is totally dependent; the Creator forming all things, and the 
creature made, met together to a personal union; “ The word made 
flesh” (John i. 14), the eternal Son, the ‘‘Seed of Abraham” (Heb. 
ii. 16). What more miraculous, than for God to become man, and 
man to become God? That a person possessed of all the perfections 
of the Godhead, should inherit all the imperfections of the manhood 
in one person, sin only excepted: a holiness incapable of sinning to 
be made sin; God blessed forever, taking the properties of human 
nature, and human nature admitted to a union with the properties 
of the Creator: the fulness of the Deity, and the emptiness of man 
united together (Col. 11. 9); not by a shining of the Deity upon the 
humanity, as the light of the sun upon the earth, but by an inhabi- 
tation or indwelling of the Deity in the humanity. Was there not 
need of an Infinite Power to bring together terms so !ar asunder, to 
elevate the humanity to be capable of, and disposed for, a conjunc- 
tion with the Deity? Ifa clod of earth should be advanced to, and 
united with the body of the sun, such an advance would evidence 
itself to be a work of Almighty power: the clod hath nothing in its 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 638 


own nature to render it so glorious, no power to climb up to so high 
a dignity : how little would such a union be, to that we are speak- 
ing of! Nothing less than an Incomprehensible Power could effect 
what an Incomprehensible Wisdom did project in this affair. 

3. Especially since the union is so strait. Itis not such a union 
as is between a man and his house he dwells in, whence he goes out 
and to which he returns, without any alteration of himself or his 
house; nor such a union as is between a man and his garment, which 
both communicate and receive warmth from one another; nor such 
as is between an artificer and his instrument wherewith he works; 
nor such a union as one friend hath with another: all these are dis- 
tant things, not one in nature, but have distinct substances. ‘T'wo 
friends, though united by love, are distinct persons; a man and his 
clothes, an artificer and his instruments, have distinct subsistencies ; 
but the humanity of Christ hath no subsistence, but in the person of 
Christ. The straitness of this union is expressed, and may be some- 
what conceived, by the union of fire with iron; “fire pierceth 
through all the parts of iron, it unites itself with every particle, be- 
stows a light, heat, purity, upon all of it; you cannot distinguish 
the iron from the fire, or the fire from the iron, yet they are distinct 
natures; so the Deity is united to the whole humanity, seasons it, 
and bestows an excellency upon it, yet the natures still remain dis- 
tinct. And as during that union of fire with iron, the iron is inca 
pable of rust or blackness, so is the humanity incapable of sm: and 
as the operation of fire is attributed to the red-hot iron (as the iron 
may be said to heat, burn, and the fire may be said to cut and 
pierce), yet the imperfections of the iron do not affect the fire; so in 
this mystery, those things which belong to the Divinity are ascribed 
to the humanity, and those things which belong to the humanity, 
are ascribed to the Divinity, in regard of the person in whom those 
natures are united: yet the imperfections of the humanity do not 
hurt the Divinity.”s The Divinity of Christ is as really united with 
the humanity, as the soul with the body; the person was one, 
though the natures were two; so united, that the sufferings of the 
human nature were the sufferings of that person, and the dignity of 
the Divine was imputed to the human, by reason of that unity of 
both in one person ; hence the blood of the human nature is said to 
be the “ blood of God” (Acts xx. 28). All things ascribed to the 
Son of God, may be ascribed to this man; and the things ascribed 
to this man, may be ascribed to the Son of God, as this man is the 
Son of God, eternal, Almighty; and it may be said, “ God suffered, 
was crucified,” &c., for the person of Christ is but one, most simple ; 
the person suffered, that was God and Man united, making one per- 
son.h 

4, And though the union be so strait, yet without confusion of 
‘he natures, or change of them into one another. The two natures 
of Christ are not mixed, as liquors that incorporate with one another 
when they are poured into a vessel; the Divine nature is not turned 
into the human, nor the human into the Divine; one nature doth 
not swallow up another, and make a third nature distinct from each 

& Lessius de Perf. Diyin. lib. xii. cap. 4. p. 104. » Lessius, pp. 103, 104. 


64 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of them.i The Deity is not turned into the humanity, as air (which 
is next to a spirit) may be thickened and turned into water, and 
water may be rarified into air by the power of heat boiling it. The 
Deity cannot be changed, because the nature of it is to be unchange- 
able ; it would not be Deity, if it were mortal and capable of suffer- 
ing. The humanity is not changed into the Deity, for then Christ 
could not have been a sufferer; if the humanity had been swallowed 
up into the Deity, it had lost its own distinct nature, and put on the 
nature of the Deity, and, consequently, been incapable of suffering; 
finite can never, by any mixture, be changed into infinite, nor in- 
finite into finite. ‘This union, in this regard, may be resembled to 
the union of light and air, which are strictly jomed; for the light 
passes through all parts of the air, but they are not confounded, but 
remain in their distinct essences as before the union, without the 
least confusion with one another. The Divine nature remains as it 
was before the union, entire in itself; only the Divine person as- 
sumes another nature to himself The human nature remains, as 
it would have done, had it existed separately from the 4éyoc, except 
that then it would have had a proper subsistence by itself, which 
now it borrows from its union with the 4éyoc, or, word; but that 
doth not belong to the constitution of its nature. Now let us con- 
sider, what a wonder of power is all this: the knitting a noble soul 
to a body of clay, was not so great an exploit of Almightiness, as 
the espousing infinite and finite together. Man is further distant 
from God, than man from nothing. What a wonder is it, that two 
natures infinitely distant, should be more intimately united than 
anything in the world; and yet without any confusion! that the 
same person should have both a glory anda grief; an infinite joy 
in the Deity, and an inexpressible sorrow in the humanity! That 
a God upon a throne should be an infant in a cradle; the thunder- 
ing Creator be a weeping. babe and a suffering man, are such ex- 
pressions of mighty power, as well as condescending love, that they 
astonish men upon earth, and angels in heaven. 

Thirdly, Power was evident in the progress of his life; in the 
miracles he wrought. How often did he expel malicious and power- 
ful devils from their habitations ; hurl them from their thrones, and 
make them fall from heaven like lightning! How many wonders 
were wrought by his bare word, or a single touch! Sight restored 
to the blind, and hearing to the deaf; palsy members restored to 
the exercise of their functions; a dismiss given to many deplorable 
maladies ; impure leprosies chased from the persons they had in- 
fected, and bodies beginning to putrefy raised from the grave. But 
the mightiest argument of power was his patience; that He who 
was, in his Divine nature, elevated above the world, should so long 
continue upon a dunghill, endure the contradiction of sinners against 
himself, be patiently subject to the reproaches and indignities of 
men, without displaying that justice which was essential to the 
Deity; and, in especial manner, daily merited by their provoking 
crimes. ‘The patience of man under great affronts, is a greater argu- 
ument of power, than the brawniness of his arm; a strength employ- 

i Lessius pp. 108, 104 Amyrald. Trenic. p. 284. k Amyrald. Trenie. p- 282. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 65 


ed in the revenge of every injury, signifies a greater infirmity in the 
soul, than there can be ability in the body. 

Fourthly, Divine power was apparent in his resurrection. The 
unlocking the belly of the whale for the deliverance of Jonas; the 
rescue of Daniel from the den of lions; and the restraining the fire 
from burning the three children, were signal declarations of his 
power, and types of the resurrection of our Saviour. But what are 
those to that which was represented by them? ‘That was a power 
over natural causes, a curbing of beasts, and restraining of elements; 
but in the resurrection of Christ, God exercised a power over him- 
self, and quenched the flames of his own wrath, hotter than millions 
of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnaces; unlocked the prison doors, wherein 
the curses of the law had lodged our Saviour, stronger than the belly 
and ribs of a leviathan. In the rescue of Daniel and Jonas, God 
overpowered beasts; and in this tore up the strength of the old ser- 
pent, and plucked the sceptre from the hand of the enemy of man- 
kind. The work of resurrection, indeed, considered in itself, re- 
quires the efficacy of an Almighty power; neither man nor angel 
can create new dispositions in a dead body, to render it capable of 
lodging a spiritual soul; nor can they restore a dislodged soul, by 
their own power, to: such a body. ‘The restoring a dead body to 
life requires an infinite power, as well as the creation of the world; 
but there was in the resurrection of Christ, something more difficuit 
than this; while he lay in the grave he was under the curse of the 
law, under the execution of that dreadful sentence, “Thou shalt. die 
the death.” His resurrection was not only the re-tying the marriage 
knot between his soul and body, or the rolling the stone from the 
grave; but a taking off an infinite weight, the sin of mankind, which 
lay upon him. So vast a weight could not be removed without the 
strength of an Almighty arm. It is, therefore, not to an ordinary 
operation, but an operation with power (Rom. i.4), and such a power 
wherein the glory of the Father did appear (Rom. vi. 4); “ Raised 
up from the dead by the glory of the Father,” that is, the glorious 
power of God. As the Eternal generation is stupendous, so is his 
resurrection, which is called, a new begetting of him (Acts xiii. 38). 
Tt is a wonder of power, that the Divine and human nature should 
be joined; and no less wonder that his person should surmount and 
rise up from the curse of God, under which he lay. The apostle, 
therefore, adds one expression to another, and heaps up a variety, 
signifying thereby that one was not enough to represent it (Hph. 1. 
19); “ Exceeding greatness of power, and working of mighty power, 
which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead.” 
It was an hyperbole of power, the excellency of the mightiness of 
his streneth: the loftiness of the expressions seems to come short of 
the apprehension he had of it in his soul. 

iI. This power appears in the publication and propagation of the 
doctrine of redemption. The Divine power will appear, if you con- 
sider, 1. The nature of the doctrine. 2. The instruments employed 
in it. 38. The means they used to propagate it. 4. The success 
they had. 

1. The nature of the doctrine. (1.) It was contary to the common 

VOL. H.—V. 


66 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


received reason of the world. The philosphers, the masters of 
knowledge among the Gentiles, had maxims of a different stamp 
from it. Though they agreed in the being of a God, yet their no- 
tions of his nature were confused and embroiled with many errors ; 
the unity of God was not commonly assented unto; they had mul- 
tiplied deities according to the fancies they had received from some 
of a more elevated wit and refined brain than others. ‘Though they 
had some notion of mediators, yet they placed in those seats their 
public benefactors, men that had been useful to the world, or their 
particular countries, in imparting to them some profitable invention. 
To discard those, was to charge themselves with ingratitude to them, 
from whom they had received signal benefits, and to whose media- 
tion, conduct, or protection, they ascribed all the success they had 
been blessed with in their several provinces, and to charge them- 
selves with folly for rendering an honor and worship to them so 
long. Could the doctrine of a crucified Mediator, whom they had 
never seen, that had conquered no country for them, never enlarged 
their territories, brought to light no new profitable invention for the 
increase of their earthly welfare, as the rest had done, be thought 
sufficient to balance so many of their reputed heroes? How igno- 
rant were they in the foundations of the true religion! The belief 
of a Providence was staggering ; nor had they a true prospect of the 
nature of virtue and vice; yet they had a fond opinion of the 
strength of their own reason, and the maxims that had been handed 
down to them by their predecessors, which Paul (1 Tim. vi. 20) en- 
titles, a ‘science falsely so called,” either meant of the philosophers 
or the Gnostics. They presumed that they were able to measure all 
things by their own reason; whence, when the apostle came to 
preach the doctrine of the Gospel at Athens, the great school of 
reason in that age, they gave him no better a title than that of a 
babbler (Acts xvii. 18), and openly mocked him (ver. 32); a seed 
gatherer,! one that hath no more brain or sense than a fellow that 
gathers up seeds that are spilled in a market, or one that hath a vain 
and empty sound, without sense or reason, like a foolish mounte- 
bank; so slightly did those rationalists of the world think of the 
wisdom of heaven. That the Son of God should veil himself in a 
mortal body, and suffer a disgraceful death in it, were things above 
the ken of reason. Besides, the world had a general disesteem of 
the religion of the Jews, and were prejudiced against anything that 
came from them; whence the Romans, that used to incorporate the 
gods of other conquered nations in their capital, never moved to 
have the God of Israel worshipped among them. Again, they might 
argue against it with much fleshly reason: here is a crucified God, 
preached by a company of mean and ignorant persons, what reason 
can we have to entertain this doctrine, since the Jews, who, as they 
tell us, had the prophecies of him, did not acknowledge him? Sure- 
ly, had there been such predictions, they would not have crucified, 
but crowned their King, and expected from him the conquest of the 
earth under their power. What reason have we to entertain him, 
whom his own nation, among whom he lived, with whom he con- 
} Lrequoddyoc. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 67 


versed so unanimously, by the vote of the rulers as well as the rout, 
rejected? It was impossible to conquer minds possessed with so 
many errors, and applauding themselves in their own reason, and to 
render them capable of receiving revealed truths without the influ- 
ence of a Divine power. 
(2.) It was contrary to the customs of the world. The strength 
_ of custom*in most men, surmounts the strength of reason, and men 
commonly are so wedded to it, that they will be sooner divorced 
from anything than the modes and patterns received from their an- 
cestors. The endeavoring to change customs of an ancient stand- 
ing, hath begotten tumults and furious mutinies among nations, 
though the change would have been much for their advantage. This 
doctrine struck at the rect of the religion of the world, and the cere- 
monies, where they had been educated from their infancy, de- 
livered to them from their ancestors, confirmed by the customary 
observance of many ages, rooted in their minds and established by 
their laws (Acts xvui. 13); “This fellow persuadeth us to worship 
God contrary to the law ;” against customs, to which they ascribed 
the happiness of their states, and the prosperity of their people, and 
would put, in the place of this religion they would abolish, a new 
one instituted by a man, whom the Jews had condemned, and put 
to death upon a cross, as an impostor, blasphemer, and seditious 
person. It was a doctrine that would change the customs of the 
Jews, who were intrusted with the oracles of God. It would bury 
forever their ceremonial rites, delivered to them by Moses, from that 
God, who had, with a mighty hand, brought them out of Egypt, 
consecrated their law with thunders and lghtnings from Mount 
Sinai, at the time of its publication, backed it with severe sanctions, 
confirmed it by many miracles, both in the wilderness and their 
- Canaan, and had continued it for so many hundred years. They 
could not but remember how they had been ravaged by other na- 
tions, and, judgments sent upon them when they neglected and 
slighted it; and with what great success they were followed when 
they valued and observed it; and how they had abhorred the Author 
of this new religion, who had spoken slightly of their traditions, till 
they put him to death with infamy. Was it an easy matter to 
divorce them from that worship, upon which were entailed, as they 
imagined, their peace, plenty, and glory, things of the dearest re- 
gard with mankind? ‘The Jews were no less devoted to their cere 
monial traditions than the heathen were to their vain superstitions. 
This doctrine of the gospel was of that nature, that the state of re- 
ligion, all over the earth, must be overturned by it; the wisdom of 
the Greeks must vail to it, the idolatry of the people must stoop to 
it, and the profane customs of men must moulder under the weight 
of. it. Was it an easy matter for the pride of nature to deny a cus- 
tomary wisdom, to entertain a new doctrine against the authority of 
their ancestors, to inscribe folly upon that which hath made them 
admired by the rest of the world? Nothing can be of greater 
esteem with men, than the credit of their lawgivers and founders, 
the religion of their fathers, and prosperity of themselves: hence 
the minds of men were sharpened against it. The Greeks, the 


68 i CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


wisest nation, slighted it as foolish; the Jews, the religious nation, 
stumbled at it, as contrary to the received interpretations of ancient 
prophecies and carnal conceits of an earthly glory. The dimmest 
eye may behold. the difficulty to change custom, a second nature : 
if is as hard as to change a wolf into a lamb, to level a mountain, 
stop the course of the sun, or change the inhabitants of Africa into 
the color of Europe. Custom dips men in as durable a dye as na- 
ture. The difficulties of carrying it on against the Divine religion 
of the Jew, and rooted custom of the Gentiles, were unconquerable 
by any but an Almighty power. And in this the power of God 
hath appeared wonderfully. 

(3.) It was contrary to the sensuality of the world, and the lusts 
of the flesh. How much the Gentiles were overgrown with base 
and unworthy lusts at the time of the publication of the gospel, 
needs no other memento than the apostle’s discourse (Rom. 1). As 
there was no error but prevailed upon their minds, so there was no 
brutish affection but was wedded to their hearts. The doctrine pro- 
posed to them was not easy ; it flattered not the sense, but checked 
the stream of nature. It thundered down those three great engines 
whereby the devil had subdued the world to himself: “the lust of 
the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life:” not only the 
most sordid affections of the flesh, but the more refined gratifications 
of the mind: it stripped nature both of devil and man; of what was 
commonly esteemed great and virtuous. That which was the root 
of their fame, and the satisfaction of their ambition, was struck at 
by this axe of the gospel. The first article of it ordered them to 
deny themselves, not to presume upon their own worth ; to lay their 
understandings and wills at the foot of the cross, and resign them up 
to one newly crucified at Jerusalem: honors and wealth were to be 
despised, flesh to be tamed, the cross to be borne, enemies to be 
loved, revenge not to be satisfied, blood to be spilled, and torments 
to be endured for the honor of One they never saw, nor ever be- 
fore heard of; who was preached with the circumstances of a shame- 
fal death, enough to affright them from the entertainment: and the 
report of a resurrection and glorious ascension were things never 
heard of by them before, and unknown in the world, that would not 
easily enter into the belief of men: the cross, disgrace, self-denial, 
were only discoursed of in order to the attainment of an invisible 
world, and an unseen reward, which none of their predecessors ever 
returned to acquaint them with; a patient death, contrary to the 
pride of nature, was published as the way to happiness and a blessed 
immortality: the dearest lusts were to be pierced to death for the 
honor of this new Lord. Other religions brought wealth and honor; 
this struck them off from such expectations, and presented them 
with no promise of anything in this life, but a prospect of misery ; 
except those inward consolations to which before they had been utter 
strangers, and had never experimented. It made them to depend 
not upon themselves, but upon the sole grace of God. It decried all 
natural, all moral idolatry, things as dear to men as the apple of 
their eyes. It despoiled them of whatsoever the mind, will, and 
affections of men, naturally lay claim to, and glory in. It pulled. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 69 


self up by the roots, unmanned carnal man, and debased the prin- 
ciple of honor and self-satisfaction, which the world counted at that 
time noble and brave. In a word, it took them off from themselves, 
to act like creatures of God’s framing; to know no more than he 
would admit them, and do no more than he did command them. 
How difficult must it needs be to reduce men, that placed all their 
happiness in the pleasures of this life, from their pompous idolatry 
and brutish affections, to this mortifying religion! What might the 
world say? Here is a doctrine will render us a company of puling 
animals: farewell generosity, bravery, sense of honor, courage in 
enlarging the bounds of our country, for an ardent charity to the 
bitterest of our enemies. Here is a religion will rust our swords, 
canker our arms, dispirit what we have hitherto called virtue, and 
annihilate what hath been esteemed worthy and comely among man- 
kind. Must we change conquest for suffering, the increase of our 
reputation for self-denial, the natural sentiment of self-preservation 
for affecting a dreadful death? How impossible was it that a cru- 
ecified Lord, and a crucifying doctrine should be received in the 
world without the mighty operation of a divine power upon the 
hearts of men! And in this also the almighty power of God did 
notably shine forth. 

2. Divine power appeared in the instruments employed for the 
publishing and propagating the gospel; who were (1.) Mean and 
worthless in themselves: not noble and dignified with an earthly 
grandeur, but of a low condition, meanly bred: so far from any 
splendid estates, that they possessed nothing but their nets; without 
any credit and reputation in the world; without comeliness and 
strength; as unfit to subdue the world by preaching, as an army of 
hares were to conquer it by war: not learned doctors, bred up at the 
feet of the famous Rabbins at Jerusalem, whom Paul calls “the 
princes of the world” (1 Cor. ii. 8); nor nursed up in the school of 
Athens, under the philosophers and orators of the time: not the 
wise men of Greece, but the fishermen of Galilee; naturally skilled 
in no language but their own, and no more exact in that than those 
of the same condition in any other nation: ignorant of everything 
but the language of their lakes, and their fishing trade; except Paul, 
called some time after the rest to that employment: and after the 
descent of the Spirit, they were ignorant and unlearned in every- 
thing but the doctrine they were commanded to publish ; for the 
council, before whom they were summoned, proved them to be so, 
which increased their wonder at them (Acts iv. 13). Had it been 
published by a voice from heaven, that twelve poor men, taken out 
of boats and creeks, without any help of learning, should conquer 
the world to the cross, it might have been thought an illusion against 
all the reason of men; yet we know it was undertaken and accom- 
plished by them. They published this doctrine in J erusalem, and 
quickly spread it over the greatest part of the world. Folly out- 
witted wisdom, and weakness overpowered strength. The conquest 
of the east by Alexander was not so admirable as the enterprise of 
these poor men. He attempted his conquest with the hands of a 
warlike nation, though, indeed, but a small number of thirty thou- 


70 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


sand against multitudes, many hundred thousands of the enemies; 
yet an effeminate enemy; a people inured to slaughter and victory 
attacked great numbers, but enfeebled by luxury and voluptuousness. 
Besides, he was bred up to such enterprises, had a learned education 
under the best philosopher, and a military education under the best 
commander, and anatural courage to animate him. These instru- 
ments had no such advantage from nature; the heavenly treasure 
was placed in those earthen vessels, as Gideon’s lamps im empty 
pitchers (Judges vii. 16), that the excellency, or hyperbole, of the 
power, might be of God (2 Cor. iv. 7), and the strength of his arm 
be displayed in the infirmity of the instruments. They were desti- 
tate of earthly wisdom, and therefore despised by the Jews, and de- 
rided by the Gentiles; the publishers were accounted madmen, and 
the embracers fools. Had they been men of known natural endow- 
ments, the power of God had been veiled under the gifts of the creature. 

(2.) Therefore a Divine power suddenly spirited them, and fitted 
them for so great a work. Instead of ignorance, they had the 
knowledge of the tongues; and they that were scarce well skilled in 
their own dialect, were instructed on the sudden to speak the must 
flourishing languages in the world, and discourse to the people of 
several nations the great things of God (Acts ii. 11). Though they 
were not enriched with any worldly wealth, and possessed nothing, 
yet they were so sustained that they wanted nothing in any place 
where they came; a table was spread for them in the midst of their 
bitterest enemies. Their fearfulness was changed into courage, and 
they that a few days before skulked in corners for fear of the 
Jews (John xx. 19), speak boldly in the name of that Jesus, whom 
they had seen put to death by the power of the rulers and the fury 
of the people: they reproach them with the murder of their Master, 
and outbrave that great people in the midst of their temple, with 
the glory of that person they had so lately crucified (Acts n 23; m1. 
13). Peter, that was not long before qualmed at the presence of a 
maid, was not daunted at the presence of the council, that had their 
hands yet reeking with the blood of his Master; but being filled with 
the Holy Ghost, seems to dare the power of the priests and Jewish 
governors, and is as confident in the council chamber, as he had 
been cowardly in the high-priest’s hall (Acts iv. 9), &., the efficacy 
of grace triumphing over the fearfulness of nature. Whence should 
this ardor and zeal, to propagate a doctrine that had already borne 
the scars of the peoples’ fury be, but from a mighty Power, which 
changed those hares into lions, and stripped them of their natural 
cowardice to clothe them with a Divine courage; making them in a 
moment both wise and magnanimous, alienating them from any con- 
sultations with flesh and blood? As soon as ever the Holy Ghost 
came upon them as a mighty rushing wind, they move up and down 
for the interest of God; as fish, after a great clap of thunder, are 
roused, and move more nimbly on the top of the water; therefore, 
that which did so fit them for this undertaking, is called by the title 
of “ power from on high” (Luke xxiv. 49). 

3. The Divine power appears in the means whereby it was prop- 
agated. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 71 


(1.) By means different from the methods of the world. Not by 
force of arms, as some religions have taken root in the world. Ma- 
homet’s horse hath trampled upon the heads of men, to imprint an 
Alcoran in their brains, and robbed men of their goods to plant their 
religion. But the apostles bore not this doctrine through the world 
upon the points of their swords; they presented a bodily death where 
they would bestow an immortal life. They employed not troops of 
men in a warlike posture, which had been possible for them after 
the gospel was once spread; they had no ambition to subdue men 
unto themselve, but to God; they coveted not the possessions of oth- 
ers; designed not to enrich themselves; invaded not the rights of 
princes, nor the liberties and properties of the people: they rifled 
them not of their estates, nor scared them into this religion by a fear 
of losing their worldly happiness. The arguments they used would 
naturally drive them from an entertainment of this doctrine, rather 
than allure them to be proselytes to it: their design was to change 
their hearts, not their government; to wean them from the love of 
the world, to a love of a Redeemer; to remove that which would 
ruin their souls. It was not to enslave them, but ransom them; they 
had a warfare, but not with carnal weapons, but such «as were 
“mighty through God for the pulling down strongholds” (2 Cor. x. 4); 
they used no weapons but the doctrine they preached. Others that 
have not gained conquests by the edge of the sword and the strata- 
gems of war, bave extended their opinions to others by the strength 
of human reason, and the insinuations of eloquence. But the apos- 
tles had as little flourish in their tongues, as edge upon their swords: 
their preaching was “not with the enticing words of man’s wisdom” 
(1 Cor. 1. 4); their presence was mean, and their discourses without 
varnish; their doctrine was plain, a “crucified Christ ;” a doctrine 
unlaced, ungarnished, untoothsome to the world; but they had the 
demonstration of the Spirit, and a mighty power for their companion 
in the work. The doctrine they preached, viz. the death, resurrection 
and ascension of Christ, are called the powers, not of this world, but 
“of the world to come” (Heb. vi. 5). No less than a supernatural 
power could conduct them in this attempt, with such weak methods 
in human appearance. ; 

(2.) Against all the force, power, and wit of the world. The di- 
vision in the eastern empire, and the feeble and consuming state of 
the western, contributed to Mahomet’s success." But never was 
Rome in a more flourishing condition: learning, eloquence, wisdom, 
strength, were at the highest pitch. Never was there a more dili- 
gent watch against any innovations; never was that state governed 
by more severe and suspicious princes, than at the time when Tibe- 
rius and Nero held the reins. No time seemed to be more unfit for 
the entrance of a new doctrine than that age, wherein it begun to be 
first published; never did any religion meet with that opposition 
from men. Idolatry hath been often settled without any contest ; 
but this hath suffered the same fate with the institutor of it, and en- 
dured the contradictions of sinners against itself: and those that 
published it, were not only without any worldly prop, but exposed 

. ™ Daille. Serm. XV. p. 57. 


T2 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


themselves to the hatred and fury, to the racks and tortures, of the 
strongest powers on earth. It never set foot in any place, but the 
country was in an uproar (Acts xix. 28); swords were drawn to 
destroy it; laws made to suppress it; prisons provided for the pro- 
fessors of it; fires kindled to consume them, and executioners hada 
perpetual employment to stifle the progress of it. Rome, in its con- 
quest of countries, changed not the religion, rites, and modes of 
their worship: they altered their civil government, but left them to 
the liberty of their religion, and many times joined with them in 
the worship of their peculiar gods; and sometime imitated them at 
Rome, instead of abolishing them in the cities they had subdued. 
But all their councils were assembled, and their foree was bandied 
‘“acainst the Lord, and against his Christ ;” and that city that kindly 
received all manner of superstitions, hated this doctrine with an ir- 
recoucileable hatred. It met with reproaches from the wise, and 
fury from the potentates; it was derided by the one as the greatest 
folly, and persecuted by the other as contrary to God and mankind; 
the one were afraid to lose their esteems by the doctrine, and the 
other to lose their authority by a sedition they thought a change of 
religion would introduce. The Romans, that had been conquerors 
of the earth, feared intestine commotions, and the falling asunder 
the links of their empire: scarce any of their first emperors, but 
had their swords dyed red in the blood of the Christians. The flesh 
with all its lusts, the world with all its flatteries the statesmen with 
all their craft, and the mighty with all their strength, joined to- 
gether to extirpate it: though many members were taken off by the 
fires, yet the church not only lived, but flourished, in the furnace. 
Converts were made by the death of martyrs; and the flames which 
consumed their bodies, were the occasion of firing men’s hearts with 
a zeal for the profession of it.. Instead of being extinguished, the 
doctrine shone more bright, and multiplied under the sickles that 
were employed to cut it down. God ordered every circumstance so, 
both in the persons that published it, the means whereby, and the 
time when, that nothing but his power might appear in it, without 
anything to dim and darken it. 

4. The Divine power was conspicuous in the great success it had 
under all these difficulties. Multitudes were prophesied of to em- 
brace it; whence the prophet Isaiah, after the prophecy of the 
death of Christ (Isa. li.), calls upon the church to enlarge her tents, 
and “lengthen out her cords” to receive those multitudes of chil- 
dren that should call her mother (Isa. liv. 2, 8); for she should 
“break forth on the right hand and on the left, and her seed should 
inherit the Gentiles!” the idolaters and persecutors should list their 
names in the muster-roll of the church. Presently, after the descent 
of the Holy Ghost from heaven upon the apostles, you find the 
hearts of three thousand melted by a plain declaration of this doc- 
trine; who were a little before so far from having a favorable 
thought of it, that some of them at least, if not all, had expressed 
their rage against it, in voting for the condemning and crucifying 

the Author of it (Acts 1. 41, 42): but in a moment they were so 
altered, that they breathe out affections instead of fury; neither the 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 72 


respect they had to their rulers, nor the honor they bore to their 
priests; not the derisions of the people, nor the threatening of pun- 
ishment, could stop them from owning it in the face of multitudes 
of discouragements. How wonderful is it that they should so soon, 
and by such small means, pay a reverence to the servants, who had 
none for the Master! that they should hear them with patience, 
without the same clamor against them as against Christ, “ Crucity 
them, crucify them!” but, that their hearts should so suddenly be in- 
flamed with devotion to him dead, whom they so much abhorred 
when living. It had gained footing not in a corner of the world, 
but in the most famous cities; in Jerusalem, where Christ had been 
crucified; in Antioch, where the name of Christians first began ; in 
Corinth, a place of ingenious arts; and Ephesus, the seat of a noted 
idol. In less than twenty years, there was never a province of the 
Roman empire, and scarce any part of the known world, but was 
stored with the professors of it. Rome, that was the metropolis of 
the idolatrous world, had multitudes of them sprinkled in every 
corner, whose “ faith was spoken of throughout the world” (Rom. 1. 
8). The court of Nero, that monster of mankind, and the cruelest 
and sordidest tyrant that ever breathed, was not empty of sincere 
votaries to it; there were “saints in Ceesar’s house” while Paul was 
under Nero’s chain (Phil. iv.): and it maintained its standing, and 
and flourished in spite of all the force of hell, two hundred and 
fifty years before any sovereign prince espoused it. The potentates 
of the earth had conquered the lands of men, and subdued their bo- 
dies; these vanquished hearts and wills, and brought the most be- 
loved thoughts under the yoke of Christ: so much did this doctrine 
overmaster the consciences of its followers, that they rejoiced more 
at their yoke, than others at their liberty; and counted it more a 
glory to die for the honor of it, than to live in the profession of it. 
Thus did our Saviour reign and gather subjects in the midst of his 
enemies; in which respect, in the first discovery of the gospel, he is 
described as “a mighty Conqueror” (Rev. vi. 2), and still conquering 
in the greatness of his strength. How great a testimony of his 
power is it, that from so small a cloud should rise so glorious a sun, 
that should chase before it the darkness and power of hell; triumph 
over the idolatry, superstition, and profaneness of the world! This 
plain doctrine vanquished the obstinacy of the Jews, baffled the un- 
derstanding of the Greeks, humbléd the pride of the grandees, 
threw the devil not only out of bodies, but hearts; tore up the foun- 
dation-of his empire, and planted the cross, where the devil had for 
many ages before established his standard. How much more than a 
human force is illustrious in this whole conduct! Nothing in any 
age of the world can parallel it: it being so much against the me- 
thods of nature, the disposition of the world, and (considering the 
resistance against it) seems to surmount even the works of creation. 
Never were there, in any profession, such multitudes, not of bed- 
lams, but men of sobriety, acuteness, and wisdom, that exposed 
themselves to the fury of the flames, and challenged death in the 
most terrifying shapes for the honor of this doctrine. To conclude, 
this should be often meditated upon to form our understandings to a 


74 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


full assent to the gospel, and the truth of it; the want of which con- 
sideration of power, and the customariness of an education in the 
outward profession of it, is the ground of all the profaneness under 
it, and apostasy from it; the disesteem of the truth it declares, and 
the neglect of the duties it enjoins. The more we have a prospect 
and sense of the impressions of Divine power in it, the more we 
shall have a reverence of the Divine precepts. 

Itt. The third thing is, the power of God appears in the applica. 
tion of redemption, as well as in the Person redeeming, and the 
publication and propagation of the doctrine of redemption: 1. In 
the planting grace. 2. In the pardon of sin. 8. In the preserving 
grace. 

First, In the planting grace. There is no expression which the 
Spirit of God hath thought fit in Scripture to resemble this work to, 
but argues the exerting of a Divine power for the effecting of it. 
When it is expressed by light, it is as much as the power of God in 
the creating the sun; when by regeneration, it is as much as the 
power of God in forming an infant, and fashioning all the parts of 
a man; when it is called resurrection, it is as much as the rearing 
of a body again out of putrified matter; when it is called creation, it 
is as much as erecting a comely world out of mere nothing, or an 
inform and uncomely mass. As we could not contrive the death of 
Christ for our redemption, so we cannot form our souls to the ac- 
ceptation of it; the infinite efficacy of grace is as necessary for the 
one, as the infinite wisdom of God was for laying the platform of 
the other. Itis by his power we have whatsoever pertains to god- 
liness as well as life (2 Pet. i. 3); he puts his fingers upon the han- 
dle of the lock, and turns the heart to what point he pleases; the 
action whereby he performs this, is expressed. by a word of force; 
‘“‘He hath snatched us from the power of darkness:’" the action 
whereby it is performed manifests it. In reference to this power, itis 
called creation, which is a production from nothing; and conversion is 
a production from something more incapable of that state, than mere 
nothing is of being. There is greater distance between the terms of 
sin and righteousness, corruption and grace, than between the terms of 
nothing and being; the greater the distance is, the more power is re- 
quired to the producing any thing. As in miracles, the miracle is 
the greater, where the change is the greater; and the change is the 
greater, where the distance is the greater. As it was a more signal 
mark of power to change a dead man to life, than to change a sick 
man to health; so that the change here being from a term of a 
greater distance, is more powerful than the creation of heaven and 
earth. ‘Therefore, whereas creation is said to be wrought by his 
hands, and the heavens by his fingers, or his word; conversion is 
said to be wrought by his arm (Isa. liii. 1). In creation, we had an 
earthly; by conversion, a heavenly state: in creation, nothing is 
changed into something; in conversion, hell is transformed into 
heaven, which is more than the turning nothing into a glorious 
angel. In that thanksgiving of our Saviour, for the revelation of 
the knowledge of himself to babes, the simple of the world, he gives 


" Colos.i.19. épdidaro. 


= 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. FD 


the title to his Father, of “ Lord of heaven and earth” (Matt. xi. 5); 
intimating it to be an act of his creative and preserving power ; that 
power whereby he formed heaven and earth, hath preserved the 
standing, and governed the motions of all creatures from the begin- 
ning of the world. It is resembled to the most magnificent act of 
divine power that God ever put forth, viz. that ‘in the resurrection 
of our Saviour” (Eph. 1. 19); wherein there was more than an or- 
dinary impression of might. It is not so small a power as that 
whereby we speak with tongues, or whereby Christ opened the 
mouths of the dumb, and the ears of the deaf, or unloosed the cords 
of death from a person. It is not that power whereby our Saviour 
wrought those stupendous miracles when he was in the world: but 
that power which wrought a miracle that amazed the most knowing 
angels, as well as ignorant man; the taking off the weight of the sin of 
the world from our Saviour, and advancing him in his human nature 
to rule over the angelic host, making him head of principalities and 
powers; as much as to say, as great as all that power which is dis- 
played in our redemption, from the first foundation to the last line in 
the superstructure. It is, therefore, often set forth with an em- 
hasis, as ‘‘ Excellency of power” (2 Cor. iv. 7), and “Glorious power” 
(0 Pet. 1. 3): “to glory and virtue,” we translate it, but it is dud d6Eye, 
through glory and virtue, that is, by a glorious virtue or strength. 

The instrument whereby it is wrought, is dignified with the title 
of power. The gospel which God useth in this great affair is called 
“The power of God to salvation” (Rom. i. 16), and the “Rod of 
his strength” (Ps. cx. 2); and the day of the gospel’s appearance in 
the heart is emphatically called, “The day of power” (ver. 8); 
wherein he brings down strong-holds and towering imaginations. 
And, therefore, the angel Gabriel, which name signifies the power 
of God, was always sent upon those messages which concerned the 
gospel, as to Daniel, Zacharias, Mary.o The gospel is the power of 
God in a way of instrumentality, but the almightiness of God is the 
principal in a way of efficiency. The gospel is the sceptre of Christ; 
but the power of Christ is the mover of that sceptre. The gospel 
is not as a bare word spoken, and proposing the thing; but as 
backed with a higher efficacy of grace; as the sword doth instru- 
mentally cut, but the arm that wields it gives the blow, and makes 
it successful in the stroke. But this gospel is the power of God, 
because he edgeth this by his own power, to surmount all resist- 
ance, and vanquish the greatest malice of that man he designs to 
work upon. ‘The power of God is conspicuous, 

1, In turning the heart of man against the strength of the inclina- 
tions of nature. In the forming of man of the dust of the ground; 
as the matter contributed nothing to the action whereby God formed 
it, so it had no principle of resistance contrary to the design of God ; 
but in converting the heart, there is not only wanting a principle of 
assistance from him in this work, but the whole strength of corrupt 
nature is alarmed to combat against the power of his grace. When 
the gospel is presented, the understanding is not only ignorant of it, 
but the will perverse against it; the one doth not relish, and the 
® Grotius in Luke i. 19. 


76 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


other doth not esteem, the excellency of the object. The carnal 
wisdom in the mind contrives against it, and the rebellious will puts 
the orders in execution against the counsel of God, which requires 
the invincible power of God to enlighten the dark mind, to know 
what it slights; and the fierce will, to embrace what it loathes. 
The stream of nature cannot be turned, but by a power above na- 
ture; it is not all the created power in heaven and earth can change 
@ Swine into a man, or a venemous toad into an holy and illustrious 
angel. Yet this work is not so great, in some respect, as the stilling 
the fierceness of nature, the silencing the swelling waves in the 
heart, and the casting out those brutish affections which are born 
and grow up with us. There would be no, or far less, resistance in 
a mere animal, to be changed into a creature of a higher rank, than 
there is in a natural man to be turned into a serious Christian. 
There is in every natural man a stoutness of heart, a stiff neck, un- 
willingness to good, forwardness to evil; Infinite Power quells this 
stoutness, demolisheth these strongholds, turns this wild ass in her 
course, and routs those armies of turbulent nature against the grace 
of God. ‘To stop the floods of the sea is not such an act of power, 
as to turn the tide of the heart. This power hath been employed 
upon every convert in the world; what would you say, then, if 
you knew all the channels in which it hath run since the days of 
Adam? If the alteration of one rocky heart into a pool of water be 
a wonder of power, what then is the calming and sweetening by his 
word those 144,000 of the tribes of Israel, and that numberless | 
multitude of all nations and people that shall stand “before the 
throne” (Rev. vii. 9), which were all naturally so many raging seas? 
Not one converted soul from Adam to the last that shall be in the 
end of the world, but is a trophy of the Divine conquest. None 
were pure volunteers, nor listed themselves in his service, till he put 
forth his strong arm to draw them to him. No man’s understand- 
ing, but was chained with darkness, and fond of it; no man but 
had corruption in his will, which was dearer to him than anything 
else which could be proposed for his true happiness. These things 
are most evident in Scripture and experience. 

2. As it is wrought against the inclinations of nature, so against 
a multitude of corrupt habits rooted in the souls of men. A dis- 
temper in its first invasion may more easily be cured, than when it 
becomes chronical and inveterate. The strength of a disease, or the 
complication of many, magnifies the power of the physician, and 
efficacy of the medicine that tames and expels it. What power is 
that which hath made men stoop, when natural habits have been 
grown giants by custom; when the putrefaction of nature hath en- 
gendered a multitude of worms; when the ulcers are many and de- 
plorable; when many cords, wherewith God would have bound the 
sinner, have been broken, and (like Sampson) the wicked heart hath 
gloried in its strength, and grown more proud, that it hath stood like 
a strong fort against those batteries, under which others have fallen 
flat; every proud thought, every evil habit captivated, serves for 
matter of triumph to the ‘power of God” (2 Cor. x. 5). What re- 
sistance will a multitude of them make, when one of them is enough 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 77 


to hold the faculty under its dominion, and intercept its operations? 
So many customary habits, so many old natures, so many different 
strengths added to nature, every one of them standing as a barricado 
against the way of grace; all the errors the understanding is pos- 
sessed with, think the gospel folly; all the vices the will is filled 
with, count it the fetter and band. Nothing so contrary to man, as 
to be:thought a fool; nothing so contrary to man, as to enter into 
slavery. It is no easy matter to plant the cross of Christ upon a 
heart guided by many principles against the truth of it, and biased 
by a world of wickedness against the holiness of it. Nature renders 
a man too feeble and indisposed, and custom renders a man more 
weak and unwilling to change his hue (Jer. xii. 23). To dispossess 
man then of his self-esteem and self-excellency ; to make room for 
God in the heart, where there was none but for sin, as dear to him 
as himself; to hurl down the pride of nature; to make stout ima- 
ginations stoop to the cross; to makes desires of self-advancement 
sink into a zeal for the glorifying of God, and an overruling de- 
sien for his honor, is not to be ascribed to any but an outstretched 
arm wielding the sword of the Spirit. To have a heart full of the 
fear of God, that was just before filled with a contempt of him; to 
have a sense of his power, an eye to his glory, admiring thoughts 
of his wisdom, a faith in his truth, that had lower thoughts of him 
and all his perfections, than he had of a creature; to have a hatred 
of his habitual lusts, that had brought him in much sensitive plea- 
sure; to loath them as much as he loved them; to cherish the du- 
ties he hated; to live by faith in, and obedience to, the Redeemer, 
who was before so heartily under the conduct of Satan and self; to 
chase the acts of sin from his members, and the pleasing thoughts of 
sin from his mind; to make a stout wretch willingly fall down, crawl 
upon the ground, and adore that Saviour whom before he out-dared, is 
a triumphant act of Infinite Power that can subdue all things to itself, 
and break those multitudes of locks and bolts that were upon us. 

3. Against a multitude of temptations and interests. ‘The tempta- 
tions rich men have in this world are so numerous and strong, that 
the entrance of one of them into the kingdom of heaven, that is, the 
entertainment of the gospel, is made by our Saviour an impossible 
thing with men, and procurable only by the power of God (Luke 
xviil, 24—26). The Divine strength only can separate the world 
from the heart, and the heart from the world. There must be an in- 
comprehensible power to chase away the devil, that had so long, so 
strong a footing in the affections; to render the soil he had sown 
with- so many tares and weeds, capable of good grain; to make 
spirits, that had found the sweetness of worldly prosperity, wrapt up 
all their happiness in it, and not only bent down, but—as it were— 
buried in earth and mud, to be loosened from those beloved cords, 
to disrelish the earth for a crucified Christ; I say, this must be the 
effect of an almighty power. 

__ 4, The manner of conversion shews no less the power of God. 
There is not only an irresistible force used in it, but an agreeable 
sweetness. The power is so efficacious, that nothing can vanquish 
it; and so sweet, that none did ever complain of it. The Almighty 


78 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


virtue displays itself invincibly, yet without constraint ; compelling 
the will without offering violence to it, and making it cease to be 
will: not forcing it, but changing it: not dragging it, but drawing 
it; making it will where before it nilled; removing the corrupt na- 
ture of the will, without invading the created nature and rights of 
the faculty ; not working in us against the physical nature of the 
will, but working it “to will” (Phil. ii. 18). This work is therefore 
called creation, resurrection, to shew its irresistible power; it is called 
illumination, persuasion, drawing, to shew the suitableness of its effi- 
cacy to the nature of the human faculties: it is a drawing with 
cords, which testifies an invincible strength; but, with cords of love, 
which testifies a delightful conquest. It is hard to determine 
whether it be more powerful than sweet, or more sweet than power- 
ful. It is no mean part of the power of God to twist together vic- 
tory and pleasure; to give a blow as delightful as strong, as pleasing 
to the sufferer, as it is sharp to the sinner. 

Secondly, The power of God, in the application of redemption, is 
evident in the pardoning a sinner. 

1. In the pardon itself. The power of God is made the ground of 
his patience; or the reason why he is patient, is, because he would 
“shew his power” (Rom. ix. 22). Itis apart of magnanimity to pass 
by injuries: as weaker stomachs cannot concoct the tougher food, so 
weak minds cannot digest the harder injuries: he that passes over a 
wrong 1s superior to his adversary that does it. When God speaks 
of his own name as merciful, he speaks first of himself as powerful 
(Exod. xxxiv. 6), “The Lord, The Lord God,” that is, The Lord, 
the strong Lord, Jehovah, the strong Jehovah. Let the power of 
my Lord be great, saith Moses, when he prays for the forgiveness of 
the people:p the word jigdal is written with a great jod, or a jod 
above the other letters. The power of God in pardoning is advanced 
beyond an ordinary strain, beyond the creative strength. In the 
creation, he had power over the creatures; in this, power over him- 
self: in creation, not himself, but the creatures were the object of his 
power; in that, no attribute of his nature could article against his 
design. In the pardon ofa sinner, after many overtures made to 
him and refused by him, God exerciseth a power over himself; for 
the smner hath dishonored God, provoked his justice, abused his 
goodness, done injury to all those attributes which are necessary to 
his relief: it was not so in creation, nothing was incapable of dis- 
obliging God from bringing it into being. The dust, which was the 
matter of Adam’s body, needed only the extrinsic power of God to 
form it into a man, and inspire it with a living soul: it had not-ren- 
dered itself obnoxious to Divine justice, nor was capable to excite 
any disputes between his perfections. But after the entrance of sin, 
and the merit of death, thereby there was a resistance in justice to 
the free remission of man: God was to exercise a power over him- 
self, to answer his justice, and pardon the sinner; as well as a power 
over the creature, to reduce the run away and rebel. Unless we 
have recourse to the infiniteness of God’s power, the infiniteness of 
our guilt will weigh us down: we must consider not only that we 

Pp Numb. xiv. 17. dpwGj7w, be exalted. Sept. Strength, ce. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 79 


have a mighty guilt to press us, but a mighty God to relieve us. In 
the same act of his being our righteousness, he is our strength: “In 
the Lord have I righteousness and strength” (Isa. xlv. 24). 

2. In the sense of pardon. When the soul hath been wounded 
with the sense of sin, and its iniquities have stared it in the face, the 
raising the soul from a despairing condition, and lifting it above those 
waters which terrified it, to cast the light of comfort, as well as the 
light of grace, into a heart covered with more than an Hgyptian 
darkness, is an act of his infinite and creating power (Isa. lvu. 19); 
“T create the fruit of the lips; Peace.” Men may wear out their lips 
with numbering up the promises of grace and arguments of peace, 
but all will signify no more, without a creative power, than if all 
men and angels should call to that white upon the wall to shine as 
splendidly as the sun. God only can create Jerusalem, and every 
child of Jerusalem a rejoicing (Isa. xlv. 18). A man is no more 
able to apply to himself any word of comfort, under the sense of sin, 
than he is able to convert himself, and turn the proposals of the 
word into gracious affections in his heart. To restore the joy of sal- 
vation, is, in David’s judgment, an act of sovereign power, equal to 
that of creating a clean heart (Ps. li. 10, 12). Alas! it is astate like 
to that of death ; as infinite power cam only raise from natural death, 
so from a spiritual death; also from a comfortless death: ‘In his fa- 
vor there is life;” in the want of his favor there 1s death. The 
power of God hath so placed light in the sun, that all creatures in 
the world, all the torches upon earth, kindled together, cannot make 
it day, if that doth not rise; so all the angels in heaven, and men 
upon earth, are not competent chirurgeons for a wounded spirit. The 
cure of our spiritual ulcers, and the pouring in balm, is an act of 
sovereign creative power: itis more visible in silencing a tempes- 
tuous conscience than the power of our Saviour was in the stilling 
the stormy winds and the roaring waves. As none but infinite 
power can remove the guilt of sin, so none but infinite power can re- 
move the despairing sense of it. 

Thirdly, This power is evident in the preserving grace. As the 
providence of God is a manifestation of his power in a continued 
creation, so the preservation of grace is a manifestation of his power 
in a continued regeneration. To keepa nation under the yoke, is an act 
of the same power that subdued it. It is this that strengthens men in 
suffering against the fury of hell (Col. 1.13); itis this that keeps them 
from falling against the force of hell—the Father’s hand (John x. 
29). His strength abates and moderates the violence of temptations ; 
his staff sustains his people under them ; his might defeats the power 
of Satan, and bruiseth him under a believer's feet. The counter- 
workings of indwelling corruption, the reluctances of the flesh 
against the breathings of the spirit, the fallacy of the senses, and the 
rovings of the mind, have ability quickly to stifle and extinguish 
grace, if it were not maintained by that powerful blast that first im- 
breathed it. No less power is seen in perfecting it, than was in 
planting it (2 Pet. i 8); no less in fulfilling the work of faith, than 
in engrafting the word of fuith (2 Thess. 1.11). The apostle well 
understood the necessity and efficacy of it in the preservation of faith. 


80 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


as well as in the first infusion, when he expresses himself in those 
terms ofa greatness or hyperbole of power, ‘ His mighty power,” 
or the power of his might (Eph. i. 19). The salvation he bestows, 
and the strength whereby he effects it, are joined together in the pro- 
phet’s song (Isa. xii. 2): “The Lord is my strength and my salva- 
tion.” And indeed, God doth more magnify his power in continu- 
ing a believer in the world, a weak and half-rigged vessel, in the 
midst of so many sands wheron it might split, so many rocks whereon 
it might dash, so many corruptions within, and so many temptations 
without, than if he did immediately transport him into heaven, and 
clothe him with a perfect sanctified nature—To conclude, what is 
there, then, in the world which is destitute of notices of Divine 
power? Every creature affords us the lesson ; all acts of Divine gov- 
ernment are the marks of it. Look into the word, and the manner of 
its propagation instructs us in it; your changed natures, your par- 
doned guilt, your shining comfort, your quelled corruptions, the 
standing of your staggering graces, are sufficient to preserve a sense, 
and to prevent a forgetfulness, of this great attribute, so necessary for 
your support, and conducing so much to your comfort. 

Use I. Of information and instruction. 

fnstruct. 1. If incomprehensible and infinite power belongs to the 
nature of God, then Jesus Christ hath a divine nature, because the 
acts of power proper to God are ascribed to him. This perfection 
of omnipotence doth unquestionably pertain to the Deity, and is an 
incommunicable property, and the same with the essence of God: he, 
therefore, to whom this attribute is ascribed, is essentially God. This 
is challenged by Christ, in conjunction with eternity (Rev. i. 8); “I 
am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, 
which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.” 
This the Lord Christ speaks of himself. He who was equal with 
God, proclaims himself by the essential title of the Godhead, part of 
which he repeats again (ver. 11), and this is the person which “ walks 
in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks,” the person that ‘‘ was 
dead and now lives” (ver. 17, 18), which cannot possibly be meant 
of the Father, the First Person, who can never come under the de- 
nomination of having been dead. Being, therefore, adorned with 
the same title, he hath the same Deity; and though his omnipotence 
be only positively asserted (ver. 8), yet, his eternity being asserted 
(ver. 11, 17), it inferreth his immense power; for he that is eternal, 
without limits of time, must needs be conceived powerful, without 
any dash of infirmity. Again, when he is said to be a child born, 
and ason given, in the same breath he is called the Mighty God 
(Isa. ix. 6). It is introduced as a ground of comfort to the church, 
to preserve their hopes in the accomplishment of the promises made 
to them before. They should not imagine him to have only the 
infirmity of a man, though he was veiled in the appearance of a man. 
No, they should look through the disguise of his flesh, to the might 
of his Godhead. The attribute of mighty is added to the title of 
God, because the consideration of power is most capable to sustain 
the drooping church in such a condition, and to prop up her hopes. 
It is upon this account he saith of himself, “ Whatsoever things the 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 81 


Father doth, those also doth the Son likewise” (John v. 19). In the 
ereation of heaven, earth, sea, and the preservation of all creatures, 
the Son works with the same will, wisdom, virtue, power, as the 
Father works: not as two may concur in an action in a different 
manner, as an agent and an instrument, a carpenter and his tools, 
but in the same manner of operation, éuo/ws, which we translate like- 
ness, which doth not express so well the emphasis of the word. 
There is no diversity of action between us; what the Father doth, 
that Ido by the same power, with the same easiness in every re- 
spect; there is the same creative, productive, conservative power in 
both of us; and that not in one work that is done, ad extra, but in 
all, in whatsoever the Father doth. In the same manner, not by a 
delegated, but natural and essential power, by one undivided opera- 
tion and manner of working. 

1st. The creation, which is a work of Omnipotence, is more than 
once ascribed to him. This he doth own himself; the creation of 
the earth, and of man upon it; the stretching out the heavens by his 
hands, and the forming of “all the hosts of them by his command” 
(Isa, xlv. 12). He is not only the Creator of Israel, the church (ver. 
12), but of the whole world, and every creature on the face of the 
earth, and in the glories of the heavens; which is repeated also ver. 
18, where, in this act of creation, he is called God himself, and 
speaks of himself in the term Jehovah; and swears by himself (ver. 
23). What doth he swear? “That unto me every knee shall bow, 
and every tongue shall swear.” Is this Christ? Yes, if the apostle 
may be believed, who applies it to him (Rom. xiv. 11) to prove the 
appearance of all men before the judgment-seat of Christ, whom the 
prophet calls (ver. 15) “a God that hides himself;” and so he was a 
hidden God when obscured in our fleshly infirmities. He was in 
conjunction with the Father when the sea received his decree, and 
the foundations of the earth were appointed; not as a spectator, but 
as an artificer, for so the word in Prov. viii. 80, signifies, ‘‘as one 
brought up with him ;” it signifies also, “a cunning workman” (Cant. 
vil. 1). He was the east, or the sun, from whence sprang all the 
light of life and being to the creature; so the word op (ver. 22), 
which is translated, “before his works of old,” is rendered by some, 
and signifies the east as well as before: but if it notes only his ex- 
istence before, it is enough to prove his Deity. The Scripture doth 
not only allow him an existence before the world, but exalts him as 
the cause of the world: a thing may precede anotker that is not the 
cause of that which follows; a precedency in age doth not entitle 
one brother, or thing, the cause of another: but our Saviour is not 
only ancienter than the world, but is the Creator of the world (Heb. 
i, 10, 11). “ Who laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens 
are the work of his hands.” So great an eulogy cannot be given to 
one destitute of omnipotence; since the distance between being and 
not being is so vast a gulf that cannot be surmounded and stepped 
over, but by an Infinite Power: he is the first and the last, that 
called the “generations from the beginning” (Isa. xli. 4), and had 
an almighty voice to call them out of nothing. In which regard he 
is called the “everlasting Father” (Isa. ix. 6), as being the efficient 

VOL. 11.—6 


82 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of creation; as God is called the Father of the rain, or as father is 
taken for the inventor of an art; as Jubal, the first framer and in- 
ventor of music, is called “the father of such as handle the harp” 
(Gen. iv. 21). And that Person is said to “ make the sea, and form 
the dry land by his hands” (Ps. xev. 5, 6) against whom we are ex- 
horted not to harden our hearts, which is applied to Christ by the 
apostle (Heb. iii. 8); in ver. 6, he is called “a great King,” and a 
great God our Maker.” The places wherein the creation is attributed 
to Christ, those that are the antagonists of his Deity, would evade 
by understanding them of the new, or evangelical, not of the first, 
old material creation: but what appearance is there for such a sense? 
Consider, 

(1.) That of Heb. i. 10, 11, it is spoken of that earth and heavens 
which were in the beginning of time; it is that earth shall perish, 
that heaven that shall be folded up, that creation that shall grow old 
towards a decay; that is, only the visible and material creation : the 

spiritual shall endure forever; it grows not old to decay, but grows 
up to a perfection ; it sprouts up to its happiness, not to its detriment. 
The same Person creates that shall destroy, and the same world is 
created by him that shall be destroyed by him, as well as it subsisted 
by virtue of his omnipotency. 

(2.) Can that also (Heb. i. 2), “ By whom also he made the worlds,” 
speaking of Christ, bear the same plea? It was the same Person by 
whom “God spake to us in these last times,” the same Person which 
he hath constituted “ Heir of all things, by whom also he made the 
worlds:” and the particle also, intimates it to be a distinct act from 
his speaking or prophetical office, whereby he restored and new 
created the world, as well as the rightful foundation God had to 
make him “Heir of all things.” It refers likewise, not to the time 
of Christ’s speaking upon earth, but to something past, and some- 
thing different from the publication of the gospel: it is not “ doth 
make,” which had been more likely if the apostle had meant only 
the new creation; but “ hath made,”4 referring to time long since 
past, something done before his appearance upon earth asa Prophet: 
“By whom also he made the worlds,” or ages, all things subjected 
to, or measured by time; which must be meant according to the 
Jewish phrase of this material visible world: so they entitle God in 
their Liturgy, the “Lord of Ages,” that is, the Lord of the world, 
and all ages and revolutions of the world, from the creation to the 
last period of time. If anything were in being before this frame of 
heaven and earth, and within the compass of time, it received being 
and duration from the Son of God. ‘The apostle would give an ar- 
gument to prove the equity of making him Heir of all things as 
Mediator, because he was the framer of all things as God. He may 
well be the Heir or Lord of angels as well as men, who created 
angels as well as men: all things were justly under his power as 
Mediator, since they derived their existence from him as Creator. 

(3.) But what evasion can there be for that (Col. i, 16)? “ By him 
were all things created that are in heaven and that are in earth, 
whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers, 

4 éxoioev. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 88 


all things were created by him and for him.” He is said to be the 
Creator of material and visible things, as well as spiritual and invis- 
ible; of things in heaven, which needed no restoration, as well as 
things on earth, which were polluted by sin, and stood in need of a 
new creation. How could the angels belong to the new creation, 
who had never put off the honor and purity of the first? Since they 
never divested themselves of their original integrity, they could not 
be reinvested with that which they never lost. Besides, suppose the 
holy angels be one way or other reduced as parts of the new crea 
tion, as being under the mediatory government of our Saviour, as 
their Head, and in regard of their confirmation by him in that happy 
state. In what manner shall the devils be ranked among new crea- 
tures? They are called principalities and powers as well as the 
angels, and may come under the title of things invisible: that the 
are called principalities and powers is plain (Hph. vi. 12): “ For we 
wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and 
powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world; against spiritual 
wickedness in high places.” Good angels are not there meant, for 
what war have believers with them, or they with believers? They 
are the guardians of them, since Christ hath taken away the enmity 
between our Lord and theirs, in whose quarrel they were engaged 
against us: and since the apostle, speaking of “all things created by 
him,” expresseth it so, that it cannot be conceived he should except 
anything; how come the finally impenitent and unbelievers, which 
are things in earth, and visible, to be listed here in the roll of new 
creatures? None of these can be called: new creatures, because they 
are subjected to the government of Christ; no more than the earth 
and sea, and the animals in it, are made new creatures, because they 
are all under the dominion of Christ and his providential govern- 
ment. Again, the apostle manifestly makes the creation he here 
speaks of, to be the material, and not the new creation; for that he 
speaks of afterwards as a distinct act of our Lord Jesus, under the 
title of Reconciliation (Col. i. 20, 21), which was the restoration of 
the world, and the satisfying for that curse that lay upon it. His 
intent is here to show that not an angel in heaven, nor a creature 
upon earth, but was placed in their several degrees of excellency by 
the power of the Son of God, who, after that act of creation, and the 
entrance of sin, was the “reconciler” of the world through the blood 
of his cross. 

(4.) There is another place as clear (John i. 8): “ All things were 
made by him, and without him was nothing made that was made.” 
The creation is here ascribed to him; affirmatively, “ All things 
were made by him ;” negatively, there was nothing made without 
him: and the words are emphatical, 058 %», not one thing; except- 
ing nothing; including invisible things, as well as things conspicu- 
ous to sense only, mentioned in the story of the creation (Gen. i.); 
not only the entire mass, but the distinct parcels, the smallest worm 
and the highest angel, owe their original to him. And if not one 
thing, then the matter was not created to his hands; and his work 
consisted not only in the forming things from that matter: if that 
one thing of matter were excepted, a chief thing were excepted; if 


84. CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


not one thing were excepted, then he created something of nothing, 
because spirits, as angels and souls, are not made of any pre-existing 
or fore-created matter. How could the evangelist phrase it more 
extensively and comprehensively? This is a character of Omnipo- 
tency; to create the world, and everything in it, of nothing, requires 
an infinite virtue and power. [If all things were created by Him, 
they were not created by him as man, because himself, as man, was 
not in being before the creation; if all things were made by him, 
then himself was not made, himself was not created; and to be ex- 
istent without being made, without being created, is to be unbound- 
edly omnipotent. And if we understand it of the new creation, as 
they do that will not allow him an existence in his:Deity before his 
humanity, it cannot be true of that; for how could he regenerate 
Abraham, make Simeon and Anna new creatures, who “ waited for 
the salvation of Israel,” and form John Baptist, and fill him with the 
Holy Ghost, even from the womb (Luke i. 15), who belonged to the 
new creation, and was to prepare the way, if Christ had not a being 
before him? ‘The evangelist alludes to, and explains the history of 
the creation, in the beginning, and acquaints us what was meant by 
God, said so often, viz. the eternal Word, and describes him in his 
creative power, manifested in the framing the world, before he de- 
seribes him in his incarnation, when he came to lay the foundation 
of the restoration of the world (John i. 14), “The Word was made 
flesh ;” this Word who was “ with God, who was God, who made all 
things,” and gave being to the most glorious angels and the meanest 
creature without exception ; this Word, in time, “was made flesh.” 
(5.) The creation of things mentioned in these Scriptures cannot 
be attributed to him as an instrument. As if when it is said, “ God 
ereated all things by him, and by him made the worlds,” we were to 
understand the Father to be the agent, and the Son to be a tool in 
his Father’s hand, as an axe in the hand of a carpenter, or a file in 
the hand of a smith, or a servant acting by command as the organ 
of his master. The preposition per, or 0:4, doth not always signify 
an instrumental cause: when it is said, that the apostle gave the 
Thessalonians a command “by Jesus Christ” (1 Thess. iv. 2), was 
Christ the instrument, and not the Lord of that command the apostle 
gave? ‘The immediate operation of Christ dwelling in the apostles, 
was that whereby they gave the commands to their disciples. When 
we are called ‘by God” (1 Cor. 1. 9), is he the instrumental, or prin- 
cipal cause of our effectual vocation? And can the will of God be 
the instrument of putting Paul into the apostleship, or the sovereign 
cause of investing him with that dignity, when he calls himself an 
‘* Apostle by the will of God” (Eph. 1. 3)? And when all things are 
said to be through God, as well as of him, must he be counted the 
instrumental cause of his own creation, counsels, and judgments 
(Rom. xi. 86)? When we “ mortify the deeds of the body through 
the Spirit (Rom. vii. 13), or keep the “treasure of the word by the 
Holy Ghost” (2 Tim, i. 14), is the Holy Ghost of no more dignity in 
such acts than an instrument? Nor doth the gaining a thing by a 
person make him a mere instrument or inferior; as when a man 
gains his right in a way of justice against his adversary by the magis- 


ON THE POWER OF GoD. 85 


trate, 1s the judge inferior to the suppliant? If the Word were an 
instrument in creation, it must be a created or uncreated instrument: 
if created, it could not be true what the Evangelist saith, that “all 
things were made by him,’ since himself, the principal thing, could 
not be made by himself: if uncreated, he was God, and so acted by 
a Divine omnipotency, whicn surmounts an instrumental cause. 
But, indeed, an instrument is impossible in creation, since it is 
wrought only by an act of the Livine will. Do we need any organ 
to an act of volition? The efficacious will of the Creator is the 
cause of the original of the body of the world, with its particular 
members and exact harmony. It was formed “by a word, and es- 
tablished by a command” (Ps. xxxiii. 9); the beauty of the creation 
stood up at the precept of his will. Nor was the Son a partial cause ; 
as when many are said to build a house, one works one part, and an- 
other frames another part: God created all things by the immediate 
operation of the Son, in the unity of essence, goodness, power, wis- 
dom; not an extrinsic, but a connatural instrument. As the sun 
doth illustrate all things by his light, and quickens all things by his 
heat, so God created the worlds by Christ, as he was the “ brightness 
or splendor of his glory, the exact image of his person ;” which fol- 
lows the declaration of his making the worlds by him (Heb. i. 8, 4), 
to show, that he acted not as an instrument, but one in essential con- 
junction with him, as light and brightness with the sun. But sup- 
pose he did make the world as a kind of instrument, he was then 
before the world, not bounded by time; and eternity cannot well be 
conceived belonging to a Being without omnipotency. He is the 
End. as well as the Author, of the creatures (Col. i. 16); not only 
the principle which gave them being, but the sea, into whose glory 
they run and dissolve themselves, which consists not with the mean- 
ness of an instrument. \ 

2d. As creation, so preservation, is ascribed to Him AO sme 4 5) 
“By him all things consist.” As he preceded all things in his eter- 
nity, so he establishes all things by his omnipotency, and fixes them in 
their several centres, that they sink not into that nothing from 
whence he fetched them. By him they flourish in their several be- 
ings, and observe the laws and orders he first appointed: that power 
of his which extracted them from insensible nothing, upholds them 
in their several beings with the same facility as he spake being into 
them, even “by the word of his power” (Heb. i. 3), and by one crea- 
tive continued voice, called all generations, from’ the beginning to 
the period of the world (Isa. xli. 4), and causes them to flourish in 
their several seasons. It is “by him kings reign, and princes decree 
justice,” and all things are confined within the limits of government. 
All which are acts of an Infinite Power. 

3d. Resurrection is also ascribed to Him. The body crumbled to 
dust, and that dust blown to several quarters of the world, cannot be 
gathered in its distinct parts, and new formed for the entertainment 
of the soul, without the strength of an infinite arm. This he will do, 
and more; change the vileness of an earthly body into the glory of 
an heavenly one; a dusty flesh into a spiritual body, which is an ar- 
gument of a power invincible, to which all things cannot but stoop: 


86 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


for itis by such an operation, which testifies an ability “to subdue 
all things to himself” (Phil. iii. 21), especially when he works it 
with the same ease as he did the creation, by the power of his voice. 
(John vy. 28), ‘ All that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and 
shall come forth :” speaking them into a restored life from insensible 
dust, as he did into being from an empty nothing. The greatest acts 
of power are owned to belong to creation, preservation, resurrection. 
Omnipotence, therefore, is his right; and, therefore, a Deity cannot 
be denied to him that inherits a perfection essential to none but God, 
and impossible to be entrusted in, or managed by the hands of any 
creatures. And this is no mean comfort to those that believe in him: 
he is, in regard of his power, “the horn of salvation ;” so Zacharias 
sings of him (Luke i. 69). Nor could there be any more mighty 
found out upon whom God could have “laid our help” (Ps. lxxxix. 
19). No reason, therefore, to doubt his ability to save to the utmost, 
who hath the power of creation, preservation, and resurrection in his 
hands. His promises must be accomplished, since nothing can resist 
him: he hath power to fulfil his word, and bring all things to a final 
issue, because he is Almighty: by his outstretched arm in the de- 
liverance of his Israel from Egypt, (for it was his arm, 1 Cor. x.) he 
showed that he was able to deliver us from spiritual Egypt. The 
charge of Mediator to expiate sin, vanquish hell, form a church, con- 
duct and perfect it, are not to be effected by a person of less ability 
than infinite. Let this almightiness of His be the bottom, wherein 
to cast and fix the anchor of our hopes. 

Instruct. 2. Hence may be inferred the Deity of the Holy Ghost. 
Works of omnipotency are ascribed to the Spirit of God: by the 
motion of the wings of this Spirit, as a bird over her eggs, was that 
rude and unshapen mass hatched into .a comely world.t The stars, 
—or perhaps the angels, are meant by the “garnishing of the 
heavens” in the verse before the text,—were brought forth in their 
comeliness and dignity, as the ornaments of the upper world, by this 
Spirit; “By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens.” To this 
Spirit Job ascribes the formation both of the body and soul, under 
the title of Almighty (Job xxxiii. 4), “‘ The Spirit of God hath made 
me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life.” Resurrec- 
tion, another work of omnipotency, is attributed to him (Rom. vui. 
11). The conception of our Saviour in the womb; the miracles 
that he wrought, were by the power of the Spiritin him. Power is 
a title belonging to him, and sometimes both are put together (1 
Thess. i. 5, and other places). And that great power of changing 
the heart, and sanctifying a polluted nature, a work greater than 
creation, is frequently acknowledged in the Scripture to be the pe- 
culiar act of the Holy Ghost. The Father, Son, Spirit, are one prin- 
ciple in creation, resurrection, and all the works of omnipotence. 

Instruct. 3. Inference from the doctrine. The blessedness of God 
is hence evidenced. If God be Almighty, he can want nothing ; 
all want speaks weakness. If he doth what he will, he cannot be 
miserable ; all misery consists in those things which happen contrary 
to our will. There is nothing can hinder his happiness, because no- 

r Gen. i. 2. So the word “moved” properly signifies. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 87 


thing can resist his power. Since he is omnipotent, nothing can 
hurt him, nothing can strip him of what he hath, of what he is.s If 
he can do whatsoever he will, he cannot want anything that he 
wills. He is as happy, as great, as glorious, as he will; for he hath 
a perfect liberty of will to will, and a perfect power to attain what 
he will; his will cannot be restrained, nor his power meted. It 
would be a defect in blessedness, to will what he were not able to 
do: sorrow is the result of a want of power, with a presence of 
will. If he could will anything which he could not effect, he would 
be miserable, and no longer God: he can do whatsoever he pleases, 
and therefore can want nothing that pleases him.t He cannot be 
happy, the original of whose happiness is not in himself: nothing 
can be infinitely happy, that is limited and bounded. 

Instruct. 4. Hence is the ground for the immutability of God. As 
he is incapable of changing his resolves, because of his infinite wis- 
dom, so he is incapable of being forced to any change, because of 
his infinite power. Being almighty, he can be no more changed 
from power to weakness; than, being all-wise, he can be changed 
frora wisdom to folly; or, being omniscient, from knowledge to 
ignorance. He cannot be altered in his purposes, because of his 
wisdom; nor in the manner and method of his actions, because of 
his infinite strength. Men, indeed, when their designs are laid deep- 
est, and their purposes stand firmest, yet are forced to stand still, or 
change the manner of the execution of their resolves, by reason of 
some outward accidents that obstruct them in their course; for, hav- 
ing not wisdom to foresee future hindrances, they have not power 
to prevent them, or strength to remove them, when they unexpect- 
edly interpose themselves between their desire and performance ; 
but no created power has strength enough to be a bar against God. 
By the same act of his will that he resolves a thing, he can puff 
away any impediments that seem to rise up against him. He that 
wants no means to effect his purposes, cannot be checked by any- 
thing that riseth up to stand in his way; heaven, earth, sea, the 
deepest places, are too weak to resist his will (Ps. cxxxv. 6). The 
purity of the angels will not,and the devil’s malice cannot, frustrate 
his will; the one voluntarily obeys the beck of his hand, and the 
other is vanquished by the power of it. What can make him change 
his purposes; who Gf he please) can dash the earth against the 
heavens in the twinkling of an eye, untying the world from its cen- 
tre, clap the stars and elements together into one mass, and blow the 
whole creation of men and devils into nothing? Because he is al- 
mighty, therefore he is immutable. 

Instruct. 5. Hence is inferred the providence of God, and his gov- 
ernment of the world. His power, as well as his wisdom, gives him 
aright to govern: nothing can equal him, therefore nothing can 
share the command with him; since all things are his works, it is 
fittest they should be under his order: he that frames a work, is 
fittest to guide and govern it. God hath the most right to govern, 
because he hath knowledge to direct his power, and power to exe- 
cute the results of his wisdom: he knows what is convenient to or- 

® Sabunde, Tit. 39. t Pont. Part VI. med. 16. p. 581. 


88 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


der, and hath strength to effect what he orders. As his power would 
be oppressive without goodness and wisdom, so his goodness and 
wisdom would be fruitless without power. An artificer that hath 
lost his hands may direct, but cannot make an engine: a pilot that 
hath lost his arms may advise the way of steerage, but cannot hold 
the helm; something is wanting in him to be a complete governor : 
but since both counsel and power are infinite in God, hence results 
an infinite right to govern, and an infinite fitness, because his will 
eannot be resisted, his power cannot be enfeebled or diminished ; he 
can quicken and increase the strength of all means as he pleases. 
He can hold all things in the world together, and preserve them in 
those functions wherein he settled them, and conduct them to those 
ends for which he designed them. Every artificer, the more excel- 
lent he is, and the more excellency of power appears in his work, is 
the more careful to maintain and cherish it. Those that deny Provi- 
dence, do not only ravish from him the bowels of his goodness, but 
strip him of a main exercise of his power, and engender in men @ 
suspicion of weariness and feebleness in him; as though his strength 
had been spent in making them, that none is left to guide them. 
They would make him headless in regard of his wisdom, and bowel- 
less in regard of his goodness, and armless in regard of his strength. 
If he did not, or were not able to preserve and provide for his crea- 
tures, his power in making them would be, in a great part, an m- 
visible power; if he did not preserve what he made, and govern 
what he preserves, it would be a kind of strange and rude power, 
to make, and suffer it to be dashed in pieces at the pleasure of others. 
If the power of God should relinquish the world, the life of things 
would be extinguished, the fabric would be confounded, and fall 
mto a deplorable chaos. That which is composed of so many va- 
rious pieces, could not maintain its union, if there were not a secret 
virtue binding them together and maintaining those varieties of 
links. Well, then, since God is not only so good, that he cannot 
will anything but what is good; so wise, that he cannot err or mis- 
fake; but also so able, that he cannot be defeated or mated; he 
hath every way a full ability to govern the world: where those 
three are infinite, the right and fitness resulting from thence is un- 
questionable: and, indeed, to deny God this active part of his 
power, is to render him weak, foolish, cruel, or all. 

Instruct. 6. Here is a ground for the worship of God. Wisdom 
and power are the grounds of the respect we give to men; they be- 
ing both infinite in God, are the foundation of a solemn honor to 
be returned to him by his creatures. Ifa man makes a curious en- 
gine, we honor him for his skill; if another vanquish a vigorous 
enemy, we admire him for his strength: and shall not the efficacy 
of God’s power in creation, government, redemption, enflame us 
with a sense of the honor of his name and perfections? We admire 
those princes that have vast empires, numerous armies, that have a 
power to conquer their enemies, and preserve their own people in 
peace. How much more ground have we to pay a mighty rever- 
ence to God, who, without trouble and weariness, made and manages 
this vast empire of the world by a word and beck! What sensible 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 89 


thoughts have we of the noise of thunder, the power of the sun, the 
storms of the sea! These things that have no understanding have 
struck men with such a reverence, that many have adored them as 

ods. What reverence and adoration doth this mighty power, join- 
ed with an infinite wisdom in God, demand at our hands! All re- 
ligion and worship stands especially upon two pillars, goodness, and 
power in God; if either of these were defective, all religion would 
faint away. We can expect no entertainment with him without 
goodness, nor any benefit from him without power. This God pre- 
faceth to the command to worship him, the benefit his goodness had 
conferred upon them, and the powerful manner of conveyance of it 
to them (2 Kings xvii. 86): “The Lord brought you up from the 
land of Kgypt with great power, and an out-stretched arm; him 
shall you fear, and him shall you worship, and to him shall you do 
sacrifice. Because this attribute is a main foundation of prayer, the 
Lord’s Prayer is concluded with a doxology of it, “For thine is the 
kingdom, the power, and the glory.” As he is rich, possessing all 
blessings ; so he is powerful, to confer all blessings on us, and make 
them efficacious to us. The Jews repeat many times in their prayers, 
some say an hundred times, sbisn ada, “The King of the world;” 
it is both an awe and an encouragement." We could not, without 
consideration of it, pray in faith of success; nay, we could not pray 
at all, if his power were defective to help us, and his mercy too weak 
to relieve us. Who would solicit a lifeless, or lie a prostrate sup- 
pliant, toa feeble arm? Upon this ability of God, our Saviour 
built his petitions (Heb. v. 7): “He offered up strong cries unto 
Him that was able to save him from death.” Abraham’s faith hung 
upon the same string (Rom. iv. 21), and the captived church sup- 
plicates God to act according to the greatness of his power (Ps. 
Ixxix.11). In all our addresses this is to be eyed and considered ; 
God is able to help, to relieve, to ease me, let my misery be never 
so great, and my strength never so weak (Matt. viii. 2): “If thou 
wilt, thou canst make me clean, was the consideration the leper had 
when he came to worship Christ; he was clear in his power, and 
therefore worshipped him, though he was not equally clear in his 
will. All worship is shot wrong that is not directed to, and con- 
ducted by, the thoughts of this attribute, whose assistance we need, 
When we beg the pardon of our sins, we should eye mercy and 
power; when we beg his righting us in any case where we are un- 
justly oppressed, we do not eye righteousness without power; when 
we plead the performance of his promise, we do not regard his 
faithfulness only without the prop of his power. As power ushers 
in all the attributes of God in their exercise and manifestation in the 
world, so should it be the butt our eyes should be fixed upon in all 
our acts of worship: as without his power his other attributes would 
be ‘useless, so without due apprehensions of his power our prayers 
will be faithless and comfortless. The title in the Lord’s prayer di- 
rects us to a prospect both of his goodness and power; his goodness 
in the word Father, his greatness, excellency, and power, in the word 
Heaven. The heedless consideration of the infiniteness of this per- 

" Capel. in 1 Tim. i. 17, 


90 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


fection roots up piety in the midst of us, and makes us so careless 
in worship. Did we more think of that Power that raised the world 
out of nothing, that orders all creatures by an act of his will, that 
performed so great an exploit as that of our redemption, when mas- 
terless sin had triumphed over the world, we should give God the 
honor and adoration which so great an excellency challengeth and 
deserves at our hands, though we ourselves had not been the work 
of his hands, or the monuments of his strength; how could any 
creature engross to itself that reverence from us which is due to the 
powerful Creator, of whom it comes infinitely short in strength as 
well as wisdom ? 

Instruct. 7. From this we have a ground for the belief of the re- 
suryection. God aims at the glory of his power, as well as the glory 
of any other attribute. Moses else would not have culled out this 
as the main argument, in his pleading with God, for the sheathing 
the sword which he began to draw out against them in the wilder- 
ness (Numb. xiv. 16): ‘The nations will say, Because the Lord 
was not able to bring these people into the land which he sware to 
them,” &c. As the finding out the particulars of the dust of our 
bodies discovers the vastness of his knowledge, so to raise them will 
manifest the glory of his power as much as creation; bodies that 
have mouldered away into multitudes of atoms, been resolved into 
the elements, passed through varieties of changes, been sometimes 
the matter to lodge the form of a plant, or been turned into the sub- 
stance of a fish or fowl, or vapored up into a cloud, and been part 
of that matter which hath compacted a thunder-bolt, disposed of in 
places far distant, scattered by the winds, swallowed and concocted 
by beasts; for these to be called out from their different places of 
abode, to meet in one body, and be restored to their former consist- 
ency, in a marriage union, in the “twinkling of an eye” (1 Cor. xv. 
22), it is a consideration that may justly amaze us, and our shallow 
understandings are too feeble to comprehend it. But is it not credi- 
ble, since all the disputes against it may be silenced by reflections on 
Infinite Power, which nothing can oppose, for which nothing can be 
esteemed too difficult to effect, which doth not imply a contradiction 
in itself? It was no less amazing to the blessed virgin to hear a 
message that she should conceive a Son without knowing a man; 
but she is quickly answered, by the angel, with a ‘‘ Nothing is im- 
possible to God” (Luke i, 34, 37). The distinct parts off our bodies can- 
not be hid from his all-seeing eye, wherever they are lodged, and in 
all the changes they pass through, as was discoursed when the 
Omniscience of God was handled; shall, then, the collection of them 
together be too hard for his invincible power and strength, and the 
uniting all those parts into a body, with new dispositions to receive 
their several souls, be too big and bulky for that Power which never 
yet was acquainted with any bar? Was not the miracle of our 
Saviour’s multiplying the loaves, suppose it had not been by a new 
creation, but a collection of grain from several parts, very near as 
stupendous as this? Had any one of us been the only creatures 
made just before the matter of the world, and beheld that inform 
chaos covered with a thick darkness, mentioned Gen. i. 2, would not 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 91 


the report, that from this dark deep, next to nothing, should be 
raised such a multitude of comely creatures, with such innumerable 
varieties of members, voices, colors, motions, and such numbers of 
shining stars, a bright sun, one uniform body of light from this 
darkness, that should, like a giant, rejoice to run a race, for many 
thousands of years together, without stop or weariness; would not 
all these have seemed as incredible as the collection of scattered 
dust? What was it that erected the innumerable host of heaven, 
the glorious angels, and glittering stars, for aught we know more 
numerous than the bodies of men, but an act of the Divine will? 
and shall the power that wrought this sink under the charge of 
gathering some dispersed atoms, and compacting them into a human 
body? Can you tell how the dust of the ground was kneaded by 
God into the body of man, and changed into flesh, skin, hair, bones, 
sinews, veins, arteries, and blood, and fitted for so many several ac- 
tivities, when a human soul was breathed into it?x Can you imagine 
how a rib, taken from Adam’s side, a lifeless bone, was formed into 
head, hands, feet, eyes? Why may not the matter of men, which 
have been, be restored, as well as that which was not, be first erect- 
ed? Is it harder to repair those things which were, than to create 
those things which were not? Is there not the same Artificer? 
Hath any disease or sickliness abated his power? Is the Ancient 
of Days grown feeble? or shall the elements, and other creatures, 
that alway yet obeyed his command, ruffle against his raising voice, 
and refuse to disgorge those remains of human bodies they have 
swallowed up in their several bowels? Did the whole world, and 
all the parts of it, rise at his word? and shall not some parts of the 
world, the dust of the dead, stand up out of the graves at a word of 
the same mighty efficacy? Do we not annually see those marks of 
power which may stun our incredulity in this concern? Do you 
see in a small acorn, or little seed, any such sights, as a tree with 
body, bark, branches, leaves, flowers, fruit—where can you find 
them? Do you know the invisible corners where they lurk in that 
little body? And yet these you afterwards view rising up from this 
little body, when sown in the ground, that you could not possibly 
have any prospect of when you rolled it in your hand, or opened 
its bowels. And why may not all the particulars of our bodies, 
however disposed as to their distinct natures invisibly to us, remain 
distinct, as well as if you mingle a thousand seeds together? they 
will come up in their distinct kinds, and preserve their distinct vir- 
tues. Again, is not the making heaven and earth, the union of the 
Divine and human nature, eternity and infirmity, to make a virgin 
conceive a Son, bear the Creator, and bring forth the Redeemer, to 
form the blood of God of the flesh of a virgin, a greater work than 
the calling together and uniting the scattered parts of our bodies, 
which are all of one nature and matter? And since the power of 
God is manifested in pardoning innumerable sins, is not the scatter- 
ing our transgressions, as far as the east is from the west, as the ex- 
pression is, Ps. ciii. 12, and casting such numbers into the depths of 
the sea, which is God’s power over himself, a greater argument of 
x Lingend. Tom. III. pp. 779, 780. 


92 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


might than the recalling and repairing the atoms of our bodies from 
their various receptacles? It is not hard for them to believe this 
of the resurrection, that have been sensible of the weight and force 
of their sins, and the power of God in pardoning and vanquishing 
that mighty resistance which was made in their hearts against the 
power of his renewing and sanctifying grace. The consideration of 
the infinite power of God is a good ground of the belief of the re- 
surrection. 

Instruct. 8. Since the power of God is so great and incomprehen- 
sible, how strangevis it that it should be contemned and abused by 
the creatures as itis! The power of God is beaten down by some, 
outraged by others, blasphemed by many, under their sufferings. 
The stripping God of the honor of his creation, and the glory of his 
preservation of the world, falls under this charge: thus do they 
that deny his framing the world alone, or thought the first matter 
was not of God’s creation, and such as fancied an evil principle, the 
author of all evil, as God is the author of all good, and so exempt 
from the power of God, that it could not be vanquished by him. 
These things have formerly found defenders in the world; but they 
are, in themselves, ridiculous and vain, and have no footing in com- 
mon reason, and are not worthy of debate in a christian auditory. 

In general, all idolatry in the world did arise from the want of a 
due notion of this Infinite Power. The heathen thought one God 
was not sufficient for the managing all things in the world, and 
therefore they feigned several gods, that had several charges; as 
Ceres presided over the fruits of the earth; Esculapius over the 
cure of distempers; Mercury for merchandise and trade; Mars for 
war and battles; Apollo and Minerva for learning and ingenious 
arts; and Fortune for casual things. Whence doth the other sort 
of idolatry, the adoring our bags and gold, our dependencies on, and 
trusting in, creatures for help arise, but from ignorance of God’s 
power, or mean and slender apprehensions of it? First, there is a 
contempt of it. Secondly, An abuse of it. 

1. It is contemned in every sin, especially in obstinacy in sin. 
All sin whatsoever is built upon some false notion or monstrous 
conception of one or other of God’s perfections, and in particular of 
this. It includes a secret and lurking imagination, that we are able 
to grapple with Omnipotence, and enter the lists with Almightiness 
what else can be judged of the apostle’s expression (1 Cor. x. 22), 
‘‘Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy; are we stronger than he?” 
Do we think we have an arm too powerful for that justice we pro- 
voke, and can repel that vengeance we exasperate? Do we think 
we are an even match for God, and are able to despoil him of his 
Divinity? To despise his will, violate his order, practise what he 
forbids with a severe threatening, and pawns his power to make it 
good, is to pretend to have an arm like God, and be able to thunder 
with a voice equal or superior to him, as the expression is (Job 
xl. 9). All security in sin is of this strain; when men are not 
concerned at Divine threatenings, nor staggered in their sinful 
race, they intimate, that the declarations of Divine Power are but 
vain-glorious boastings; that God is not so strong and able as he 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 93 


reports himself to be ; and therefore they will venture it, and dare 
him to try, whether the strength of his arm be as forcible as the 
words of his mouth are terrible in his threats; this is to believe 
themselves Creators, not creatures. We magnify God’s power in 
our wants, and debase it in our rebellions; as though Omnipotence 
were only able to supply our necessities, and unable to revenge 
the injuries we offer him. | 

2. This power is contemned in distrust of God. All distrust is 
founded in a doubting of his truth, as if he would not be as good as 
his word; or of his omniscience, as if he had not a memory to re- 
tain his word ; or of his power, as if he could not be as great as his 
word. We measure the infinite power of God by the short line of 
our understandings, as if infinite strength were bounded within the 
narrow compass of our finite reason; as if he could do no more 
than we were able to do. How soon did those Israelites lose the 
remembrance of God’s outstretched arm, when they uttered that 
atheistical speech (Ps. Ixxviii. 19), “Can God furnish a table in the 
wilderness?” As if he that turned the dust of Heypt into lice, for 
the punishment of their oppressors, could not turn the dust ofthe wil- 
derness into corn, for the support of their bodies! As if he that 
had miraculously rebuked the Red Sea, for their safety, could not 
provide bread, for their nourishment! ‘Though they had seen the 
Heyptians with lost lives in the morning, in the same place where 
their lives had been miraculously preserved in the evening, yet they 
disgrace that experimental power, by opposing to it the stature of 
the Anakims, the strength of their cities, and the height of their 
walls (Numb. xii. 82). And (Numb. xiv. 3). ‘“‘ Wherefore hath 
the Lord brought us into this land to fall by thesword?” As though 
the giants of Canaan were too strong for Him, for whom they had 
seen the armies of Egypt too weak. How did they contract the 
almightiness of God into the littleness of a little man, as if he must 
needs sink under the sword of a Canaanite? This distrust must 
arise either from a flat atheism, a denial of the being of God, or his 
government of the world; or unworthy conceits of a weakness in 
him, that he had made creatures too hard for himself; that he were 
not strong enough to grapple with those mighty Anakims, and 
give them the possession of Canaan against so great a force. Dis- 
trust of him implies either that he was always destitute of power, or 
that his power is exhausted by his former works, or that it is limited, 
and near a period: it is to deny him to be the Creator that moulded 
heaven and earth. Why should we, by distrust, put a slight upon 
that power which he hath so often expressed, and which, in the 
minutest works of his hands, surmount the force of the sharpest 
understanding ? ; 

3. It is contemned in too great a fear of man, which ariseth from 
a distrust of Divine power. Fear of man is a crediting the might 
of man with a disrepute of the arm of God, it takes away the glory 
of his might, and renders the creature stronger than God; and God 
more feeble than a mortal; as if the arm of man were a rod of iron, 
and the arm of God a brittle reed. How often do men tremble at 
the threatenings and hectorings of ruffians, yet will stand as stales 


94 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


against the precepts and threatenings of God, as though he had less 
power to preserve us, than enemies had to destroy? With what dis- 
dain doth God speak to men infected with this humor (Isa. li. 12, 18) ? 
‘Who art thou, that art afraid of a man that shall die, and the 
Son of man that shall be made as grass; and forgettest the Lord 
thy Maker, that hath stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foun- 
dation of the earth; and hast feared continually every day, because 
of the fury of the oppressor?” To fear man that is as grass, that 
cannot think a thought without a Divine concourse, that cannot 
breathe, but by a Divine power, nor touch a hair without license 
first granted from heaven; this is forgetfulness, and consequently a 
slight of that Infinite Power, which hath been manifested in found- 
ing the earth and garnishing the heavens. All fear of man, in the 
way of our duty, doth in some sort thrust out the remembrance, 
and discredit the great actions of the Creator. Would not a mighty 
prince think it a disparagement to him, if his servant should decline 
his command for fear of one of his subjects? and hath not the 
great God just cause to think himself disgraced by us, when we den 
him obedience for fear of a creature: as though he had but an 
infant ability too feeble to bear us out in duty, and incapable to 
balance the strength of an arm of flesh? 

4, It is contemned by trusting in ourselves, in means, in man, 
more than in God. When in any distress we will try every creature 
refuge, before we have recourse to God; and-when we apply our- 
selves to him, we do it with such slight and perfunctory frames, 
and with so much despondency, as if we despaired either of his 
ability or will to help us; and implore him with cooler affections 
than we solicit creatures: or, when in a disease we depend upon 
the virtue of the medicine, the ability of the physician, and reflect 
not upon that power that endued the medicine with that virtue, and 
supports the quality in it, and concurs to the operation of it. When 
we depend upon the activity of the means, as if they had power 
originally in themselves, and not derivatively ; and do not eye the 
power of God animating and assisting them. We cannot expect re- 
lief from anything with a neglect of God, but we render it in our 
thoughts more powerful than God: we acknowledge a greater 
fulness in a shallow stream, than in an eternal spring; we do, in 
effect, depose the true God, and create to ourselves a new one; we 
assert, by such a kind of acting, the creature, if not superior, yet 
equal with God, and independent on him. When we trust in our 
own strength, without begging his assistance; or boast of our own 
strength, without acknowledging his concurrence, as the Assyrian ; 
“By the strength of my hand have I done this; I have put down 
the inhabitants like a valiant man” (Isa. x. 18). It is, as if the axe 
should boast itself against him that hews therewith, and thinks 
itself more mighty than the arm that wields it (ver. 15), when we 
trust in others more than in God. Thus God upbraids those by the 
prophet, that sought help from Egypt, telling them (Isa. xxxi. 3), 
“The Egyptians were men, and not gods; intimating, that by their 
dependence on them, they rendered them gods and not mcn, and 
advanced them from the state of creatures to that of almighty 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 95 


deities. It is to set a pile of dust, a heap of ashes, above Him that 
created and preserves the world. ‘To trust in a creature, is to make 
it as infinite as God; to do that which is impossible in itself to be 
done. God himself cannot make a creature infinite, for that were 
to make him God. It is also contemned when we ascribe what we 
receive to the power of instruments, and not to the power of God. 
Men, in whatsoever they do for us, are but the tools whereby the 
Creator works. Is it not a disgrace to the limner to admire his 
pencil, and not himself; to the artificer, to admire his file and _en- 
‘gines, and not his power? “It is not I,” saith Paul, “that labor, 
but the grace, the efficacious grace of God, which is in me.” What- 
soever good we do is from him, not from ourselves; to ascribe it to 
ourselves, or to instruments, is to overlook and contemn his power. 

5. Unbelief of the gospel is a contempt and disowning Divine 
power. This perfection hath been discovered in the conception of 
Christ, the union of the two natures, his resurrection from the grave, 
the restoration of the world, and the conversion of men, more than 
in the creation of the world: then what a disgrace is unbelief to all 
that power that so severely punished the Jews for the rejecting the 
gospel: turned so many nations from their beloved superstitions ; 
humbled the power of princes and the wisdom of philosophers ; 
chased devils from their temples by the weakness of fishermen ; 
planted the standard of the gospel against the common notions and 
inveterate customs of the world! What a disgrace is unbelief to 
this power which hath preserved Christianity from being extinguish- 
ed by the force of men and devils, and kept it flourishing in the 
midst of sword, fire, and executioners; that hath made the simplici- 
ty of the gospel overpower the eloquence of orators, and multiplied 
it from the ashes of martyrs, when it was destitute of all human as- 
sistances! Not heartily to believe and embrace that doctrine, which 
hath been attended with such marks of power, is a high reflection 
upon this Divine perfection, so highly manifested in the first publi- 
cation, propagation, and preservation of it. 

Secondly, The power of God is abused, as well as contemned. 1. 
When we make use of it to justify contradictions. The doctrine of 
transubstantiation is an abuse of this power. When the maintainers 
of it cannot answer the absurdities alleged against it, they have re- 
course to the power of God. It implies a contradiction, that the 
same body should be on earth and in heaven at the same instant of 
time; that it should be at the right hand of God, and in the mouth 
and stomach of a man; that it should be a body of flesh, and yet 
bread to the eye and to the taste; that it should be visible and in- 
visible, a glorious body, and yet gnawn by the teeth of a creature ; 
that it should be multiplied in a thousand places, and yet an entire 
body in every one, where there is no member to be seen, no flesh to 
be tasted ; that it should be above us in the highest heavens, and 
yet within us in our lower bowels; such contradictions as these are 
an abuse of the power of God. Again, we abuse this power when 
we believe every idle story that is reported, because God is able to 
make it so if he pleased. We may as well believe Aisop’s Fables to 
be true, that birds spake, and beasts reasoned, because the power of 


96 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


God can enable such creatures to such acts. God’s power is not the 
rule of our belief of a thing without the exercise of it in matter of 
fact, and the declaration of it upon sufficient evidence. 

2. The power of God is abused by presuming on it, without using 
the means he hath appointed. When men sit with folded arms, and 
make a confidence in his power a glorious title to their idleness and 
disobedience, they would have his strength do all, and his precept 
should move them to do nothing; this is a trust of his power against 
his command, a pretended glorifying his power with a slight of his 
sovereignty. Though God be almighty, yet, for the most part, he 
exerciseth his might in giving life and success to second causes and 
lawful endeavors. When we stay in the mouth of danger, without 
any call ordering us to continue, and against a door of providence 
opened for our rescue, and sanctuary ourselves in the power of God 
without any promise, without any providence conducting us; this 
is not to glorify the Divine might, but to neglect it, in neglecting the 
means which his power affords to us for our escape; to condemn it 
to our humors, to work miracles for us according to our wills, and 
against his own.y God ‘could have sent a worm to be Herod’s exe- 
cutioner when he sought the life of our Saviour, or employed an 
angel from heaven to have tied his hands or stopped his breath, and 
not put Joseph upon a flight to Egypt with our Saviour; yet had it 
not been an abuse of the power of God, for Joseph to have neglected 
the precept, and slighted the means God gave him for the preserving 
his own life and that of the child’s? Christ himself, when the Jews 
consulted to destroy him, presumed not upon the power of God to 
secure him, but used ordinary means for his preservation, by walking 
no more openly, but retiring himself into a city near the wilderness 
till the hour was come, and the call of his Father manifest” (John 
xi. 08, 54), A rash running upon danger, though for the truth it- 
self, is a presuming upon, and consequently an abuse of, this power ; 
a proud challenging it to serve our turns against the authority of his 
will, and the force of his precept; a not resting in his ordinate 
power, but demanding his absolute power to pleasure our follies and 
presumptions ; concluding and expecting more from it than what is 
authorized by his will. 

Instruct. 9. If infinite power be a peculiar property of God, how 
miserable will all wicked rebels be under this power of God! Men 
may break his laws, but not impair his arm; they may slight his 
word, but cannot resist his power. If he swear that he will sweep a 
place with the besom of destruction, “as he hath thought, so shall 
it come to pass; and as he hath purposed, so shall it stand,” (Isa. 
xiv. 23, 24). Rebels against an earthly prince may exceed him in 
strength, and be more powerful than their sovereign; none can equal 
God, much less exceed him. As none can exercise an act of hostility 
against him without his permissive will, so none can struggle from 
under his hand without his positive will. He hath an arm not to be 
moved, a hand not to be wrung aside. God is represented on his 
throne like a “jasper stone” (Rev. iv. 3), as one of invincible power 
when he comes to judge; the jasper is a stone which withstands the 

y Harwood, p. 13, 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 97 


greatest force.z Though men resist the order of his laws, they can- 
not the sentence of their punishment, nor the execution of it. None 
can any more exempt themselves from the arm of his strength, than 
they can from the authority of his dominion. As they must bow 
to his sovereignty, so must they sink under his force. A prisoner 
in this world may make his escape, but a prisoner in the world to 
come cannot (Job x. 7). ‘‘There is none that can deliver out of 
thine hand.” There is none to deliver when he tears in pieces” (Ps. 
1. 22). His strength is uncontrollable ; hence his throne his repre- 
sented as a “fiery flame” (Dan. vii. 9). As a spark of fire hath 
power to kindle one thing after another, and increase till it consumes 
a forest, a city, swallow up all combustible matter till 1t consumes a 
world, and many worlds, if they were in being, what power hath the 
tree to resist the fire, though it seems mighty, when it outbraves the 
winds? What man, to this day, hath been able to free himself from 
that cnain of death God clapped upon him for his revolt? And if 
he be too feeble to rescue himself from a temporal, much less from 
an eternal death. The devils have, to this minute, groaned under the 
pile of wrath, without any success in delivering themselves by all 
their strength, which much surmounts all the strength of mankind, 
nor have they any hopes to work their rescue to eternity. How 
foolish is every sinner! Can we poor worms strut it out against In- 
finite Power? We cannot resist the meanest creatures when God 
commissions them, and puts a sword into their hands. They will 
not, no, not the worms, be startled at the glory of a king, when they 
have the Creator’s warrant to be his executioners (Acts xii. 23). 
Who can withstand him, when he commands the waves and inun- 
dations of the sea to leap over the shore; when he divides the 
ground in earthquakes, and makes it gape wide to swallow the in- 
habitants of it; when the air is corrupted to breed pestilences ; 
when storms and showers, unseasonably falling, putrify the fruits 
of the earth; what created power can mend the matter, and, with 
a prevailing voice, say to him, What dost thou? There are two 
attributes God will make glister in hell to the full; his wrath 
and his power (Rom. ix. 22): ‘What if God, willing to show 
his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much 
long suffering the vessels of wrath fitted for destruction?” If it 
were mere wrath, and no power to second it, it were not so ter- 
rible; but it is wrath and power: both are joined together, It 
is not only a sharp sword, but a powerful arm; and not only 
thar, for then it were well for the damned creature. To have 
many sharp biows, and from a strong arm, this may be without 
putting forth the highest strength a man hath; but in this God 
makes it his design to make his power known and conspicuous ; he 
takes the sword, as it were, in both hands, that he may show the 
strength of his arm in striking the harder blow; and therefore the 
apostles calls it (2 Thess. i. 9) ‘‘the glory of his power,” which puts 
a sting into his wrath; and it is called (Rev. xix. 15) “ the fierce- 
ness of the wrath of the Almighty.” God will do it im such a man- 
ner as to make men sensible of his almightiness in every stroke. 


- © Grot. in loc. 
VOL, 11.—?7 


98 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


How great must that vengeance be, that is backed by all the strength 
of God! When there will be a powerful wrath, without a powerful 
compassion; when all his power shall be exercised in punishing, and 
not the least mite of it exercised in pitying ; how irresistible will be 
the load of such a weighty hand! How can the dust of the bal- 
ance break the mighty bars, or get out of the lists of a powerful 
vengeance, or hope for any grain of comfort? 0, that every obsti- 
nate sinner would think of this, and consider his unmeasurable bold- 
ness in thinking himself able to grapple with Omnipotence! What 
force can any have to resist the presence of Him, before whom rocks 
melt, and the heavens, at length, shall be shrivelled up as a parch- 
ment by the last fire! As the ight of God’s face is too dazzling to 
be beheld by us, so the arm of his power is too mighty to be opposed 
by us. His almightiness is above the reach of our potsherd strength, 
as his infiniteness is above the capacity of our purblind understand- 
ing. God were not omnipotent, if his power could be rendered in- 
effectual by any. 
Use Il. A second use of this point, from the consideration of the 
infinite power of God, is of comfort. As Omnipotence is an ocean 
that cannot be fathomed, so the comforts from it are streams that 
cannot be exhausted. What joy can be wanting to him that finds 
himself folded in the arms of Omnipotence? This perfection is 
made over to believers in the covenant, as well as any other attri- 
bute; “Iam the Lord, your God;” therefore, that power, which is 
as essential to the Godhead as any other perfection of his nature, is, 
in the rights and extent of it, assured unto you. Nay, may we not 
say, it is made over more than any other, because it 1s that which 
animates every other perfection; and is the Spirit that gives them 
motion and appearance in the world. If God had expressed himself 
in particular, as, “Iam a true God, a wise God, a loving God, a 
righteous God, Lam yours;” what would all, or any of those, have 
signified, unless the other also had been implied, as, “I am an al- 
mighty God, Iam your God?” In God’s making over himself in 
any particular attribute, this of his power is included in every one, 
without which, all his other grants would be insignificant. It isa 
comfort that power is in the hands of God; it can never be better 
placed, for he can never use his power to injure his confiding crea- 
ture; if it were in our own hands, we might use it to injure our- 
selves. It is a power in the hands of an indulgent Father, not a 
hard-hearted tyrant; it isa just power; ‘His right hand is full of 
righteousness” (Ps. xlviii. 10); because of his righteousness he can 
never use it ill, and because of his wisdom he can never use it un- 
seasonably. Men that have strength, often misplace the actings of 
it, because of their folly; and sometimes employ it to base ends, be- 
cause of their wickedness; but this power in God is always awakened 
by goodness, and conducted by wisdom; it is never exercised by 
self-will and passion, but according to the immutable rule of his own 
nature, which is righteousness. How comfortable is it to think, that 
you have a God that can do what he pleases; nothing so difficult but 
he can effect, nothing so strong but he can overrule! You need 
not dread men, since you have One to restrain them; nor fear devils, 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 99 


since you have One to chain them; no creature but is acted by this 
power; no creature but must fall upon the withdrawing of this 
power. It was not all laid out in creation; it is not weakened by his 
preservation of things; he yet hath a fullness of power, and a residue 
of Spirit; for whom should that eternal arm of the Lord be displayed, 
and that incomprehensible thunder of his power be shot out, but for 
those for whose sake and for whose comfort it is revealed in his word ? 
In particular, 

1. Here is comfort in all afflictions and distresses. Our evils can 
never be so great to oppress us, as his power is great to deliver us. 
The same power that brought a world out of a chaos, and constitu- 
ted, and hath hitherto preserved, the regular motion of the stars, can 
bring order out of our confusions, and light out of our darkness. 
When our Saviour was in the greatest distress, and beheld the face 
of his Father frowning, while he was upon the cross, in his complaint 
to him, he exerciseth faith upon his power (Matt. xxvii. 46): “ Eh, 
Eli: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” that this, My 
strong, my strong; Hl, is a name of power, belonging to God; he 
comforts himself in his power, while he complains of his frowns. 
Follow his pattern, and forget not that power that can scatter the 
clouds, as well as gather them together. The Psalmist’s support in 
his distress, was in the creative power of God (Ps. cxxi. 2): ‘ My 
help comes from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.” 

2. It is comfort in all strong and stirring corruptions and mighty 
temptations. It is by this we may arm ourselves, and “be strong in 
the power of his might” (Eph. vi. 10); by this we may conquer prin- 
cipalities and powers, as dreadful as hell, but not so mighty as heaven; 
by this we may triumph over lusts within, too strong for an arm of 
flesh; by this the devils that have possessed us may be cast out; the 
battered walls of our souls may be repaired; and the sons*of Anak 
laid flat. That power that brought light out of darkness, and over- 
mastered the deformity of the chaos, and set bounds to the ocean, 
and dried up the Red Sea by a rebuke, can quell the tumults in our 
spirits, and level spiritual Goliahs by his word. When the disciples 
heard that terrifying speech of our Saviour, concerning rich men, 
that it was ‘easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, 
than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God” (Matt. xix. 24), 
to entertain the gospel, which commanded self-denial; and that, be- 
cause of the allurements of the world, and the strong habits in their 
soul; Christ refers them to the power of God (ver. 26), who could 
expel those ill habits, and plant good ones: “ With men this is im- 
possible, but with God all things are possible.” There is no resist- 
ance, but he can surmount; no strong-hold, but he can demolish ; no 
tower, but he can level. 

3. It is comfort from hence, that all promises shall be performed. 
Goodness is sufficient to make a promise, but power is necessary to 
perform a promise. Men that are honest, cannot often make good 
their words, because something may intervene that may shorten 
their ability: but nothing can disable God, without diminishing his 
godhead. “He hath an infiniteness of power to accomplish his word, 
as well as an infiniteness of goodness to make and utter his word. 


~ £00 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


That might whereby he made heaven and earth, and his keeping 
truth forever, are joined together (Ps. cxlvi. 5, 6); his Father's faith- 
fulness, and his creative power are linked together. It is upon this 
basis the covenant, and every part of it, is established, and stands 
as firm as the almightiness of God, whereby he sprung up the earth, 
and reared the heavens. ‘No power can resist his will” (Rom. 1x. 
19); “Who can disannul his purpose, and turn back his hand when 
it is stretched out” (Isa. xiv. 27)? His word is unalterable, and his 
power is invincible. He could not deceive himself, for he knew his 
own strength when he promised: no unexpected event can change 
his resolution, because nothing can happen without the compass of 
his foresight. No created strength can stop him in his action, be- 
cause all creatures are ready to serve him at his command; not the 
devils in hell, nor all the wicked men on earth, since he hath strength 
to restrain them, and an arm to punishthem. What can be too hard 
for Him that created heaven and earth? Hence it was, that when 
God promised anything anciently to his people, he used often the 
name of the Almighty, the Lord that created heaven and earth, as 
that which was an undeniable answer to any objection, against any- 
thing that might be made against the greatness and stupendousness 
of any promise; by that name, in all his works of grace, was he 
known to them (Exod. vi. 3). When we are sure of his will, we 
need not question his strength, since he never over-engaged himself 
above his ability. He that could not be resisted by anything in cre- 
ation, nor vanquished by devils in redemption, can never want 
power to glorify his faithfulness in his accomplishment of whatsoever 
he hath promised. 

4, From this infiniteness of power in God, we have ground of as- 
surance for pe severance. Since conversion is resembled to the works 
of creatioh and resurrection, two great marks of his strength, he doth. 
not surely employ himself in the first of changing the heart, to let 
any created strength baffle that power which he began and intends 
to glorify. It was this might that struck off the chain, and expelled 
that strong one that possessed you. What, if you are too weak to 
keep him out of his lost possession, will God lose the glory of his 
first strength, by suffering his foiled adversary to make a re-entry, 
and regain his former usurpation? His out-stretched arm will not do 
less by his spiritual, than it did by his national Israel: it guarded 
them all the way to Canaan, and left them not to shift for themselves 
after he had struck off the fetters of Egypt, and buried their enemies 
in the Red Sea (Deut. i. 31). This greatness of the Father, above 
all, our Saviour makes the ground of believers’ continuance forever, 
against the blasts of hell and engines of the world (John x. 29). “ My 
Father is greater than all, and none is able to pluck them out of my 
Father’s hands.” Our keeping is not in our own weak hands, but in 
the hands of Him who is mighty to save. That power of God keeps us 
which intends our salvation. In all fears of falling away, shelter 
yourselves in the power of God: “He shall be holden up,” saith the 
apostle, speaking concerning one weak in faith; and no other reason 
is rendered by him but this, “ For God is able to make him to stand” 
(Rom. xiv. 4). 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 101 


5. From this attribute of the infinite power of God, we have a 
round of comfort in the lowest estate of the church. Let the state 
of the church be never so deplorable, the condition never so desper- 
ate, that Power that created the world, and shall raise the bodies of 
men, can create a happy state for the church, and raise her from an 
overwhelming grave; though the enemies trample upon her, they 
cannot upon the arm that holds her, which by the least motion of it, 
can lift her up above the heads of her adversaries, and make them 
feel the thunder of that Power that none can understand: by the 
“blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils they are 
consumed” (Job iv. 9); they “‘shall be scattered as chaff before the 
wind.” If once he “draw his hand out of his bosom,” all must fly 
before him, or sink under him (Ps. Ixxiv. 11): and when there is 
“none to help, his own arm sustains him, and brings salvation, and 
his fury doth uphold him” (Isa. Lxii. 5). What if the church totter 
under the underminings of hell? Whatif it hath a sad heart and 
wet eyes? In what a little moment can he make the night turn into 
day, and make the Jews, that were preparing for death in Shushan, 
triumph over the necks of their enemies, and march in one hour with 
swords in their hands, that expected the last hour ‘ropes about their 
necks (Histh. ix. 1,5)? If Israel be pursued by Pharaoh, the sea 
shall open its arms to protect them: if they be thirsty, a rock shall 
spout out water to refresh them: if they be hungry, heaven shall be 
their granary for manna: if Jerusalem be besieged, and hath not force 
enough to encounter Sennacherib, an angel shall turn the camp into 
an Aceldema, a field of blood. His people shall not want deliver- 
ances, till God want a power of working miracles for their security: 
he is more jealous of his power, than the church can be of her safety. 
And if we should want other arguments to press him, we may im- 
plore him by virtue of his power: for when there is nothing in the 
church as a motive to him to save it, there is enough in his own 
name, and ‘the illustration of his power” (Ps. cvi. 8). Who can 
grapple with the omnipotency of that God, who is jealous of, and 
zealous for, the honor of it? And therefore God, for the most part, 
takes such opportunities to deliver, wherein his almightiness may be 
most conspicuous, and his counsels most admirable. He awakened 
not himself to deliver Israel, till they were upon the brink of the 
Red Sea; nor to rescue the three children, till they were in the fiery 
furnace; nor Daniel, till he was in the lion’s den. It is in the weak- 
ness of his creature that his strength is perfected, not in a way of ad- 
dition of perfectness to it, but in a way of manifestation of the per- 
fection of it; as it is the perfection of the sun to shine and enlighten 
the world, not that the sun receives an increase of light by the dart- 
ing of his beams, but discovers his glory to the admiration of men, 
and pleasure of the world. If it were not for such occasions, the 
world would not regard the mightiness of God, nor know what power 
were in him. It traverses the stage in its fulness and liveliness upon 
such occasions, when the enemies are strong, and their strength edged 
with an intense hatred, and but little time between the contrivance 
and execution. It is a great comfort that the lowest distresses of the 
church are a fit scene for the discovery of this attribute, and that the 


102 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


glory of God’s omnipotence, and the church’s security, are so straitly 
linked together. It is a promise that will never be forgotten by 
God, and ought never to be forgotten by us, that “in this mountain 
the hand of the Lord shall rest” (Isa. xxv. 10); that is, the power of 
the Lord shall abide; and Moab “ shall be trodden under him, even 
as straw is trodden down for the dunghill.” And the “plagues of 
Babylon shall come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine ; 
for strong is the Lord who judgeth her” (Rey. xvii. 8). 

Use I1l. The third use is for exhortation. 

1. Meditate on this power of God, and press it often upon your 
minds. We conclude many things of God that we do not practically 
suck the comfort of, for want of deep thoughts of it, and frequent in- 
spection into it. We believe God to be true, yet distrust him; we 
acknowledge him powerful, yet fear the motion of every straw. 
Many truths, though assented to in our understandings, are kept 
under hatches by corrupt affections, and have not their due influ- 
ence, because they are not brought forth into the open air of our 
souls by meditation. If we will but search our hearts, we shall find 
it is the power of God we often doubt of. When the heart of Ahaz 
and his subjects trembled at the combination of the Syrian and Isra- 
elitish kings against him, for want of a confidence in the power of 
God, God sends his prophet with commission to work a miraculous 
sign at his own choice, to rear up his fainting heart; and when he 
refused to ask a sign out of diffidence of that almighty Power, the 
prophet complains of it as an affront to his Master (Isa. vil. 12, 18). 
Moses, so great a friend of God, was overtaken with this kind of un- 
belief, after all the experiments of God’s miraculous acts in Egypt; 
the answer God gives him manifests this to be at the core: “Is the 
Lord’s hand waxed short” (Numb. xi. 28)? For want of actuated 
thoughts of this, we are many times turned from our known duty by 
the blast of a creature; as though man had more power to dismay 
us, than God hath to support us in his commanded way. ‘The be- 
lief of God’s power is one of the first steps to all religion; without 
settled thoughts of it, we cannot pray lively and believingly for the 
obtaining the mercies we want, or the averting the evils we fear; we 
should not love him, unless we are persuaded he hath a power to 
bless us; nor fear him, unless we were persuaded of his power to 
punish us. The frequent thoughts of this would render our faith 
more stable, and our hopes more stedfast; it would make us more 
feeble to sin, and more careful to obey. When the virgin staggered 
at the message of the angel, that she should ‘ bear a Son,” he, in his 
answer, turns her to the creative power of God (Luke i. 35), “The 

ower of the Highest shall overshadow thee ;” which seems to be in 
allusion to the Spirit’s moving upon the face of the deep, and bring- 
ing a comely world out of a confused mass. Is it harder for God to 
make a virgin conceive a Son by the power of his Spirit, than to 
make a world? Why doth he reveal himself so often under the 
title of Almighty, and press it upon us, but that we should press it 
upon ourselves? And shall we be forgetful of that which every 
thing about us, everything within us, is a mark of? How come we 
by a power of seeing and hearing, a faculty, and act of understanding 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 103 


and will, but by this power framing us, this power assisting us? 
What though the thunder of his power cannot be understood, no 
more can any other perfection of his nature; shall we, therefore, 
seldom think of it? ‘The sea cannot be fathomed, yet the merchant 
excuseth not himself from sailing upon the surface of it. We can- 
not glorify God without due consideration of this attribute; for his 
power is his glory as much as any other, and called both by the 
name of glory (Rom. vi. 4), speaking of Christ’s resurrection by the 
glory of the Father; and also ‘the riches of his glory” (Hph. in. 16). 
Those that have strong temptations in their course and over-pressing 
corruptions in their hearts, have need to think of it out of interest, 
since nothing but this can relieve them. Those that have experi- 
mented the working of it in their new creation, are obliged to think 
of it out of gratitude. It was this mighty power over himself that 
gave rise to all that pardoning grace already conferred, or hereafter 
expected; without it our souls had been consumed, the world over- 
turned; we could not have expected a happy heaven, but have lain 
yelling in an eternal hell, had not the power of his mercy exceeded 
that of his justice, and his infinite power executed what his infinite 
wisdom had contrived for our redemption. How much also should 
we be raised in our admirations of God, and ravish ourselves in con- 
templating that might that can raise innumerable worlds in those in- 
finite imaginary spaces without this globe of heaven and earth, and 
exceed inconceivably what he hath done in the creation of this? 

2. From the pressing the consideration of this upon ourselves, let 
us be induced to trust God upon the account of his power. The 
main end of the revelation of his power to the patriarchs, and of the 
miraculous operations of it in Egypt, was to induce them to an entire 
reposing themselves in God: and the Psalmist doth scarce speak of 
the Divine Omnipotence without making this inference from it; and 
scarce exhorts to a trust in God, but backs it with a consideration of 
his power in creation, it being the chief support of the soul (Ps. 
exlvi. 1): ‘‘ Happy is he whose hope is in the Lord his God, which 
made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that therein is.” That 
Power is invincible that drew the world out of nothing: nothing can 
happen to us harder than the making the world without the concur- 
rence of instruments: no difficulty can nonplus that strength, that 
hath drawn all things out of nothing, or out of a confused matter 
next to nothing: no power can rifle what we commit to him (2 Tim. 
i. 12). He is all power, above the reach of all power; all other 
powers in the world flowing from him, or depending on him, he is 
worthy to be trusted, since we know him true, without ever breaking 
his word; and Omnipotent, never failing of his purpose; and a con- 
fidence in it is the chief act whereby we can glorify this power, and 
credit his arm. A strong God, and a weak faith in omnipotence, do 
not suit well together. Indeed, we are more engaged to a trust Im 
Divine power than the ancient patriarchs were; they had the verbal 
declaration of his power, and many of them little other evidence of 
it, than in the creation of the world; and their faith in God being 
established in this first discovery of his omnipotence, drew out itself 
further to believe, that whatsoever God promised by his word, he 


104 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


was able to perform, as well as the creation of the world out of 
nothing; which seems to be the intendment of the apostle (Heb. xi. 3) ; 
not barely to speak of the creation of the world by God, which was 
a thing the Hebrews understood well enough from their ancient 
oracles; but to show the foundation of the patriarch’s faith, wiz. 
God making the world by his Word, and what use they made of the 
discovery of his power in that, to lead them to believe the promise 
of God concerning the Seed of the woman to be brought into the 
world. But we have not only the same foundation, but superadded 
demonstrations of this attribute in the conception of our Saviour, the 
union of the two natures, the glorious redemption, the propagation 
of the gospel, and the new creation of the world. They relied upon 
the naked power of God, without those more illustrious appearances 
of it, which have been in the ages since, and arrived to their notice; 
we have the wonderful effects of that which they had but obscure ex- 
pectations of. 

(1.) Consider, trust in God can never be without taking in God’s 
power as a concurrent foundation with his truth. It is the main 
ground of trust, and so set forth in the prophet (Isa. xxvi. 4); 
“Trust ye in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlast- 
ing strength.” And the faith of the ancients so recommended (Heb. 
xi), had this chiefly for its ground; and the faith in gospel times is 
called a “ trusting on his arm” (Isa. li. 5.) All the attributes of God 
are the objects of our veneration, but they do not equally contribute 
to the producing trust in our hearts; his eternity, simplicity, infinite- 
ness, ravish and astonish our minds when we consider them; but , 
there is no immediate tendency in their nature to allure us to a con- 
fidence in him, no, not in an innocent state, much less in a lapsed 
and revolted condition: but the other perfections of his nature, as 
his holiness, righteousness, mercy, are amiable to us in regard of the 
immediate operations of them upon and about the creature, and so 
have something in their own nature to allure us to repose ourselves 
in him; but yet those cannot engage to an entire trust in him with- 
out reflecting upon his ability, which can only render those useful 
and successful to the creature.2 For whatsoever bars stand in the 
way of his holy, righteous, and merciful proceedings towards his 
creatures, are not overmastered by those perfections, but by that 
strength of his which can only relieve us in concurrence with the 
other attributes. How could his mercy succor us without his arm, 
or his wisdom guide us without his hand, or his truth perform pro- 
mises to us without his strength? As no attribute can act without 
it, so in our addresses to him upon the account of any particular 
perfection in the Godhead according to our indigency, our eye must 
be perpetually fixed upon this of his power, and our faith would be 
feeble and dispirited without eyeing this: without this, his holiness, 
which hates sin, would not be regarded; and his mercy, pitying a 
grieving sinner, would not be valued. As this power is the ground 
of a wicked man’s fear, so it is the ground of a good man’s trust. 
This was that which was the principal support of Abraham, not 
barely his promise, but his ability to make it good (Rom. iv. 21); 

* Amyrant Moral. Tom. V. p. 170. 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. . 105 


and when he was commanded to sacrifice Isaac, the ability of God 
to raise him up again (Heb. xi. 19). All faith would droop, and be 
in the mire, without leaning upon this; all those attributes which 
we consider as moral in God, would have no influence upon us with- 
out this, which we consider physically in God. Though we value 
the kindness men may express to us in our distresses, yet we make 
them not the objects of our confidence, unless they have an ability 
to act what they express. There can be no trust in God without an 
eye to his power. 

(2.) Sometimes the power of God is the sole object of trust. As 
when we have no promise to assure us of his will, we have nothing 
else to pitch upon but his ability ; and that not his absolute power, 
but his ordinate, in the way of his providence; we must not trust in 
it so as to expect he should please our humor with fresh mir: cles, 
but rest upon his power, and leave the manner to his will. Asa, 
when ready to conflict with the vast Ethiopian army, pleaded noth- 
ing else but this power of God (2 Chron. xiv. 11). And the three 
children, who had no particular promise of deliverance (that we 
read of) stuck to God’s ability to preserve them against the king’s 
threatening, and owned it in the face of the king, yet with some 
kind of inward intimations in their own spirits, that he would also 
deliver them (Dan. iii. 17). ‘Our God, whom we serve, is able to 
deliver us from the burning fiery furnace.” And accordingly the 
fire burnt the cords that tied them, without singeing any thing else 
about them. But when this power hath been exercised upon like 
occasions, it is a precedent he hath given us to rest upon. Prece- 
dents in law are good pleas, and strong encouragements to the client 
to expect success in his suit. “ Our fathers trusted in thee, and thou 
didst deliver them,” saith David (Ps. xxii. 4). And Jehoshaphat, 
in a case of distress (2 Chron. xx. 7), ‘‘ Art not thou our God, that 
didst drive out the inhabitants of this land before thy people Israel ?” 
When we have not any statute law and promise to plead, we may 
plead his power, together with the former precedents and act of it. 
‘The centurion had nothing else to act his faith upon but the power 
of Christ, and some evidences of it in the miracles reported of him; 
but he is silent in the latter, and casts himself only upon the former, 
acknowledging that Christ had the same command over diseases, as 
himself had over his soldiers (Matt. viii. 10). And our Saviour, 
when he receives the petition of the blind men, requires no more of 
them in order to a cure, but a belief of his ability to perform 1t 
(Matt. ix. 28). ‘ Believe you that I am able to do this?’ His will is 
not known but by revelation, but his power is apprehended_ by 
reason, as essentially and eternally linked with the notion of a God. 
God also is jealous of the honor of this attribute ; and since it 1s so 
much virtually discredited, he is pleased when any do cordially own 
it, and entirely resign themselves to the assistance of it. Well, then, 
in all duties where faith is particularly to be acted, forget not this as 
the main prop of it: do you pray for a flourishing and triumphing 
grace? Consider him “as able to make all grace to abound in 
you” (2 Cor. ix. 8). Do you want comfort and reviving under your 
contritions and godly sorrow ? Consider him, as he declares lumself, 


106 CHARNOCK ON .AE ATTRIBUTES. 


“the high and lofty One’ (Isa. lvii. 15). Are you under pressing 
distresses ? take Eliphaz’s advice to Job, when he tells him what he 
himself would do if he were in his case (Job v. 8), ‘‘I would seek 
unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause:” but observe 
under what consideration (ver. 9) as to one “ that doth great things, 
and unsearchable; marvellous things without number.” When you 
beg of him the melting your rocky hearts, the dashing in pieces your 
strong corruptions, the drawing his beautiful image in your soul, 
the quickening your dead hearts, and reviving your drooping spirits, 
and supplying your spiritual wants, consider him as one “able to 
do abundantly,” not only “above what you can ask,” but ‘above 
what you can think” (Eph. iii. 20). Faith will be spiritless, and 
prayer will be liveless, if power be not eyed by us in those things 
which cannot be done without an arm of Omnipotence. 

d. This doctrine teacheth us humility and submission. The vast 
disproportion between the mightiness of God, and the meanness of 
a creature, inculcates the lesson of humility in his presence. How 
becoming is humility under a mighty hand (1 Pet. v. 6)! What is 
an infant in a giant’s hand, or a lamb ina lion’s paw? Submission 
to irresistible power is the best policy, and the best security; this 
gratifies and draws out goodness, whereas murmuring and resistance 
exasperates and sharpens power. We sanctify his name, and glorify 
his strength, by falling down before it; it is an acknowledgement of 
his invisible strength, and our inability to match it. How low 
should we therefore he before him, against whose power our pride 
and murmuring can do no good, who can out-wrestle us in our con- 
tests, and alway overcome when he judges (Rom. iu. 4)! 

4, This doctrine teacheth us not to fear the pride and force of 
man. How unreasonable is it to fear a limited, above an unbounded 
power! How unbecoming is the fear of man in him, who hath an 
interest in a strength able to curb the strongest devils! Who would 
tremble at the threats of a dwarf, that hath a mighty and watchful 
giant for his guard? If God doth but arise, his enemies are scattered 
(Ps. Ixvii. 1): the least motion makes them fly before him: it is no 
difficult thing for Him, that made them by a word, to unmake their 
designs, and shiver them in pieces by the breath of his mouth: ‘He 
brings princes to nothing, and makes the judges of the earth vanity; 
they wither when he blows upon them, and their stock shall not 
take root in the earth. He can command a whirlwind to take them 
away as stubble” (Isa. xl. 23, 24); yea, with the ‘shaking of his 
hand he makes servants to become rulers of those that were their 
masters (Zech. 1. 9). Whole nations are no more in his hands than 
a ‘‘morning cloud,’ or the “dew upon the ground,” or ‘the chaff 
before the wind,” or the smoke against the motion of the air, which, 
though it appear out of a chimney like a black invincible cloud, is 
quickly dispersed, and becomes invisible (Hos, xiii. 8). How incon- 
siderable are the most mighty to this strength, which can puff away 
a whole world of proud grasshoppers, and a whole sky of daring 
clouds! He that by his word masters the rage of the sea, can over- 
rule the pride and power of men. Where is the fury of the oppres- 
sor? Itcannotoverleap the bounds he hath set it, nor march an inch 


Li 
x 


ON THE POWER OF GOD. 107 


beyond the point he hath prescribed it. Fear not the confederacies 
of man, but “sanctify the Lord of hosts; let him be your fear, and. 
let him be your dread” (Isa. vii. 13). To fear men is to dishonor 
the name of God, and regard him as a feeble Lord, and not as the 
Lord of hosts, who is mighty in strength, so that they that harden 
themselves against him shall not prosper. 

5. Therefore this doctrine teacheth us the fear of God. The pro- 
phet Jeremiah counts it as an impossible thing for men to be desti- 
tute of the fear of God, when they seriously consider his name to be 
great and mighty (Jer. x. 6, 7): “Thou art great, and thy name is 
oreat in might: who would not fear thee, O thou King of nations ?” 
Shall we not tremble at his presence, who hath placed the ‘‘ sand for 
the bound of tue sea by a perpetual decree ;” that though the waves 
thereof toss themselves, yet they cannot prevail (Jer. v. 22). He 
can arm the weakest creature for our destruction, and disarm the 
strongest creatures which appear for our preservation. He can com- 
mand a hair, a crumb, a kernel, to go awry, and strangle us. He 
can make the heavens brass over our head, stop close the bottles 
of the clouds, and make the fruit of the fields droop, when there is a 
small distance to the harvest; he can arm men’s wit, wealth, hands, 
against themselves; he can turn our sweet morsels into bitter, and 
our own consciences into devouring lions; he can root up cities by 
moles, and conquer the proudest by lice and worms. The omnipo- 
tence of God is not only the object of a believer’s trust, but a be- 
hever's fear. It is trom the consideration of this power only, that 
our Saviour presses his disciples, whom he entitles his friends, to fear 
God; which lesson he presses by a double repetition, and with a 
kind of asseveration, without rendering any other reason than this 
of the ability of God to cast into hell (Luke xii. 5). We are to fear 
Him because he can; but bless his goodness because he will not. In 
regard of his omnipotence, he is to be reverenced, not only by mor- 
tal men, but by the blessed angels, who are past the fear of any 
danger by his power, being confirmed in a happy state by his unal- 
terable grace: when they adore him for his holiness, they reverence 
him for his power with covered faces: the title of the “Lord of 
hosts” is joined in their reverential praise with that of his holiness 
(Isa. vi. 3), “‘ Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” How should 
we adore that Power which can preserve us, when devils and men 
conspire to destroy us! How should we stand in awe of that Power 
which can destroy us, though angels and men should combine to 
preserve us! ‘The parts of his ways which are discovered, are suffi- 
cient motives to an humble and reverential adoration: but who can 
fear and adore him according to the vastness of his power, and his 
excellent greatness, since “the thunder of his power who can under- 
stand ?” 


DISCOURSE XI, 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 


Wxerus xv, 11—Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like thee 
glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders ? 


THIS verse is one of the loftiest descriptions of the majesty and 
excellency of God in the whole Scripture.» Itis a part of Moses’ 
‘Emyvlxov, or “ triumphant song,” after a great and real, and a typical 
victory; in the womb of which all the deliverances of the church 
were couched. It is the first song upon holy record, and it consists 
of gratulatory and prophetic matter; it casts a look backward to 
what God did for them in their deliverance from Egypt; and a look 
forward to what God shall do for the church in future ages. That 
deliverance was but a rough draught of something more excellent to 
he wrought towards the closing up of the world; when his plagues 
shall be poured out upon the anti-christian powers, which should re- 
vive the same song of Moses in the church, as fitted so many ages 
before for such ascene of affairs (Rev. xv. 2, 8). It is observed, 
therefore, that many words in this song are put in the future tense, 
noting a time to come; and the very first word, ver. 1, ‘‘ Then sang 
Moses and the children of Israel this song ;” 77", shall sing; imply- 
ing, that it was composed and calculated for the celebrating some 
greater action of God’s, which was to be wrought in the world.¢ 
Upon this account, some of the Jewish rabbins, from the considera: 
tion of this remark, asserted the doctrine of the resurrection to be 
meant in this place; that Moses and those Israelites should rise 
again to sing the same song, for some greater miracles God should 
work, and greater triumphs he should bring forth, exceeding those 
wonders at their deliverance from Hgypt. 

It consists of, 1. A preface (ver. 1); ‘I will sing unto the Lord.”4 
2. An historical narration of matter of fact (ver. 8, 4), ‘ Pharaoh’s 
chariots and his host hath he cast into the Red Sea;” which he solely 
ascribes to God (ver. 6), “Thy right hand, O Lord, is become glori- 
aus in power: thy rigbt hand, O Lord, hath dashed in pieces the 
enemy ;” which he doth prophetically, as respecting something to be 
done in after-times; or further for the completing of that deliver- 
ance; or, as others think, respecting their entering into Canaan ; for 
the words, in these two verses, are put in the future tense. The man- 
ner of the deliverance is described (ver. 8); “The floods stood up- 


b Trap. in loc. ¢ Manass, ben Israel, de Resurr. lib. 1, eap. 1, p. 7. 
4 Pareus in Exod, xv. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 109 


night as an heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.” 
In the 9th verse, he magnifies the victory from the vain glory and se- 
curity of the enemy; “The enemy said, I will pursue, f will overtake, 
T will divide the spoil,” &&. And ver. 16, 17, He prophetically describes 
the fruit of this victory, in the influence it shall have upon those na- 
tions, by whose confines they were to travel to the promised land ; 
“Tear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thy arin 
they shall be as still as a stone, till thy people pass over which thon 
hast purchased.” The phrase of this and the 17th and 18th verses, 
seems to be more magnificent than to design only the bringing the 
Israelites to the earthly Canaan; but seems to respect the gathering 
his redeemed ones together, to place them in the spiritual sanctuary 
which he had established, wherein the Lord should reign forever 
and ever, without any enemies to disturb his royalty; “The Lord 
shall rein forever and ever” (ver. 18). The prophet, in the midst of 
his historical narrative, seems to be in an ecstasy, and breaks out in 
a stately exaltation of God in the text. 

Who ts like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? &c. Interrogations 
are, in Scripture, the strongest affirmations or negations; it 1s here 
a strong affirmation of the incomparableness of God, and a strong 
denial of the worthiness of all creatures to be partners with him in 
the degrees of his excellency; it is a preference of God before all 
creatures in holiness, to which the purity of creatures is but a 
shadow in desert of reverence and veneration, he being “fearful in 
praises.” The angels cover their faces when they adore him in his 
particular perfections. 

Amongst the gods. Among the idols of the nations, say some; 
others say,¢ it is not to be found that the Heathen idols are ever dig- 
nified with the title of “strong or mighty,” as the word translated 
gods, doth import; and therefore understand it of the angels, or 
other potentates of the world; or rather inclusively, of all that are 
noted for, or can lay claim to, the title of strength and might upon 
the earth or in heaven. God is so great and majestic, that no crea- 
ture can share with him in his praise. 

Fearful in praises. Various are the interpretations of this passage : 
to be “reverenced in praises;” his praise ought to be celebrated 
with a religious fear. Fear is the product of his mercy as well as 
his justice; ‘He hath forgiveness that he may be feared” (Ps. cxxx. 
4). Or, “fearful in praises;” whom none can praise without amaze- 
ment at the considerations of his works. None can truly praise him 
without being affected with astonishment at his greatness.£ Or, 
“fearful in praises;” whom no mortal can sufficiently praise, 
since he is above all praises Whatsoever a human tongue can 
speak, or an angelical understanding think of the excellency of 
his nature and the greatness of his works, falls short of the vast- 
ness of the Divine perfection. A creature’s praises of God arc as 
much below the transcendent eminency of God, as the meanness 
of a creature’s being is below the eternal fulness of the Creator. 
Or, rather, “fearful,” or terrible, “in praises;” that is, in the 
matter of thy praise: and the learned Rivet concurs with me m 

e Rivet. € Calvin. < Munster. 


110 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


this sense. The works of God, celebrated in this song, were ter- 
rible; it was the miraculous overthrow of the strength and flower 
of a mighty nation; his judgments were severe, as well as his 
mercy was seasonable. The word x7: signifies glorious and illus- 
trious, as well as terrible and fearful. No man can hear the praise 
of thy name, for those great judicial acts, without some astonish- 
ment at thy justice, the stream, and thy holiness, the spring of those 
mighty works. ‘This seems to be the sense of the following words, 
‘doing wonders:” fearful in the matter of thy praise; they being 
wonders which thou hast done among us and for us. 

Doing wonders. Congealing the waters by a wind, to make them 
stand like walls for the rescue of the Israelites ; and melting them by 
a wind, for the overthrow of the Egyptians, are prodigies that chal- 
lenge the greatest adorations of that mercy which delivered the one, 
and that justice which punished the other; and of the arm of that 
power whereby he effected both his gracious and righteous purposes. 

Whence observe, that the judgments of God upon his enemies, as 
‘well as his mercies to his people, are matters of praise. The perfec- 
tions of God appear in both. Justice and mercy are so linked to- 
gether in his acts of providence, that the one cannot be forgotten 
whilst the other is acknowledged. He is never so terrible as in the 
assemblies of his saints, and the deliverance of them (Ps. lxxxix. 7). 
As the creation was erected by him for his glory; so all the acts of 
his government are designed for the same end: and his creatures 
deny him his due, if they acknowledge not his excellency in what- 
soever dreadful, as well as pleasing garbs, it appears in the world. 
His terror as well as his righteousness appears, when he is a God of 
salvation (Ps. ]xv. 5). “ By terrible things in righteousness wilt thou 
answer us, O God of our salvation.” But the expression I pitch 
upon in the text to handle, is glorious in holiness. He is magnified 
or honorable in holiness; so the word “7%: is translated (Isa. xlu. 
21). “He will magnify the law, and make it honorable.” ‘Thy holi- 
ness hath shone forth admirably in this last exploit, against the ene- 
mies and oppressors of thy people. ‘The holiness of God is his glory, 
as his grace is bis riches: holiness is his crown, and his mercy is his 
treasure. This is the blessedness and nobleness of his nature; it 
renders him glorious in himself, and glorious to his creatures, that 
understand any thing of this lovely perfection. Holiness is a glori- 
ous perfection belonging to the nature of God. Hence he is in Scrip- 
ture styled often the Holy One, the Holy One of Jacob, the Holy 
One of Israel; and oftener entitled Holy, than Almighty, and set 
forth by this part of his dignity more than by any other. This is more 
affixed as an epithet to his name than any other: you never find it 
expressed, His mighty name, or his His wise name; but His great 
name, and most of all, His holy name. This is his greatest title of 
honor; in this doth the majesty and venerableness of his name ap- 

ear. When the sinfulness of Sennacherib is aggravated, the Hol 
Ghost takes the rise from this attribute (2 Kings xix. 22). “Thou 
hast lift up thine eyes on high, even against the Holy One of Israel ;” 
not against the wise, mighty, &c., but against the Holy One of 
Israel, as that wherein the majesty of God was most illustrious. It 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. lil 


is upon this account he is called light, as impurity is called dark- 
ness; both in this sense are opposed to one another: he is a pure 
and unmixed light, free from all blemish in his essence, nature, and 
operations. 

1. Heathens have owned it. Proclus calls him, the undefiled Go- 
vernor of the world. The poetical transformations of their false 
gods, and the extravagancies committed by them, was—in the ac- 
count of the wisest of them—an unholy thing to report and hear.' 
And some vindicate Epicurus from the atheism wherewith he was 
commonly charged; that he did not deny the being of God, but 
those adulterous and contentious deities the people worshipped, which 
were practices unworthy and unbecoming the nature of God.k 
Hence they asserted, that virtue was an imitation of God, and a 
virtuous man bore a resemblance to God: if virtue were a copy from 
God, a greater holiness must be owned in the original. And when 
some of them were at a loss how to free God from being the author 
of sin in the world, they ascribe the birth of sin to matter, and run 
into an absurd opinion, fancying it to be uncreated, that thereby they 
might exempt God from all mixture of evil; so sacred with them 
was the conception of God, as a Holy God. 

2. The absurdest heretics have owned it. The Maniches and 
Marchionites, that thought evil came by necessity, yet would salve 
God’s being the author of it, by asserting two distinct eternal prin- 
ciples, one the original of evil, as God was the fountain of good: so 
rooted was the notion of this Divine purity, that none would ever 
slander goodness itself with that which was so disparaging to it.! 

3. The nature of God cannot rationally be conceived without it. 
Though the power of God be the first rational conclusion, drawn 
from the sight of his works, wisdom the next, from the order and 
connexion of his works, purity must result from the beauty of his 
works: that God cannot be deformed by evil, who hath made every 
thing so beautiful in its time. The notion of a God cannot be en- 
tertained without separating from him whatsoever is impure and be- 
spotting both in his essence and actions. Though we conceive him 
infinite in Majesty, infinite in essence, eternal in duration, mighty in 
power, and wise and immutable in his counsels; merciful in his 
proceedings with men, and whatsoever other perfections may dig- 
nify so sovereign a Being, yet if we conceive him destitute of this 
excellent perfection, and imagine him possessed with the least con- 
tagion of evil, we make him but an infinite monster, and sully all 
those perfections we ascribed to him before; we rather own him a 
devil than a God. It is a contradiction to be God and to be dark- 
ness, or to have one mote of darkness mixed with his light. It is a 
less injury to him to deny his being, than to deny the purity of it; 
the one makes him no god, the other a deformed, unlovely, and a 
detestable god. Plutarch said not amiss, That he should count him- 
self less injured by that man, that should deny that there was such a 
man as Plutarch, than by him that should affirm that there was such 

h “Aypavtog tyeucv. i ovd’ dxoverv dovov. Ammon. in Plut. de Ez apud Delphos, 


Pp. 399. X Gassend. Tom. I, Phys. § 1, lib. 4, cap. 2, p. 289. 
! Petay, Theol. Dogmat. Tom, I. lib. 6, cap. 5, p. 415, 


112 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


a one indeed, but he was a debauched fellow, a loose and vicious 
person. It is a less wrong to God to discard any acknowledgments 
of his being, and to count him nothing, than to believe him to exist, 
but imagine a base and unholy Deity: he that saith, God is not holy, 
speaks much worse than he that saith, There is no God at all. Let 
these two things be considered. 

I. If any, this attribute hath an excellency above his other perfec- 
tions. There are some attributes of God we prefer, because of our 
interest in them, and the relation they bear to us: as we esteem his 
goodness before his power, and his mercy whereby he relieves us, 
before his justice whereby he punisheth us; as there are some we 
more delight in, because of the goodness we receive by them; so there 
are some that God delights to honor, because of their excellency. 

1. None is sounded out so loftily, with such solemnity, and so 
frequently by angels that stand before his throne, as this. Where 
do you find any other attribute trebled in the praises of it, as this 
(Isa. vi. 3)? “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth 
is full of his glory ;” and (Rev. iv. 8), ‘‘The four beasts rest not day 
and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty,” &c. His 
power or sovreignty, as Lord of hosts, is but once mentioned, but 
with a ternal repetition of his holiness. Do you hear, in any angeli- 
cal song, any other perfection of the Divine Nature thrice repeated ? 
Where do we read of the crying out Hternal, eternal, eternal; or, 
Faithful, faithful, faithful, Lord God of Hosts? Whatsoever other 
attribute is left out, this God would have to fill the mouths ofangels 
and blessed spirits for ever in heaven. 

2. He singles it out to swear by (Ps. lxxxix. 35): “ Once have ] 
sworn by my holiness, that I will not he unto David:” and (Amos 
iv. 2), “The Lord will swear by his holiness:” he twice swears by 
his holiness; once by his power (Isa. lx. 8); once by all, when he 
swears by his name (Jer. xliv. 26). He lays here his holiness to 
pledge for the assurance of his promise, as the attribute most dear to 
him, most valued by him, as though no other could give an assur- 
ance parallel to it in this concern of an everlasting redemption which 
is there spoken of: he that swears, swears by a greater than himself; 
God having no greater than himself, swears by himself: and swear- 
ing here by his holiness, seems to equal that single one to all his 
other attributes, as if he were more concerned in the honor of it, 
than of all the rest. It is as if he should have said, Since I have not 
a more excellent perfection to swear by, than that of my holiness, I 
lay this to pawn for your security, and bind myself by that which I 
will never part with, were it possible for me to be stripped of all the 
rest. It is a tacit imprecation of himself, If I le unto David, let me 
never be counted holy, or thought righteous enough to be trusted by 
angels or men. This attribute he makes most of. 

3. It is his glory and beauty. Holiness is the honor of the crea- 
ture; sanctification and honor are linked together (1 Thess. iv. 4): 
much more is it the honor of God; it is the image of God in the 
creature (Eph. iv. 24). When we take the picture of a man, we 
draw the most beautiful part, the face, which is a member of the 
greatest excellency. When God would be drawn to the life, as much 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 113 


gs can be, in the spirit of his creatures, he is drawn in this attribute, 
as being the most beautiful perfection of God, and most valuable 
with him. Power is his hand and arm; omniscience, his eye; mercy, 
his bowels; eternity, his duration ; his holiness is his beauty (2 Chron. 
xx. 21);—“‘should praise the beauty of holiness.” In Ps. xxvii. 4, 
David desires ‘‘to behold the beauty of the Lord, and inquire in his 
holy temple ;” that is, the holiness ef God manifested in his hatred 
of sin in the daily sacrifices. Holiness was the beauty of the temple 
(Isa. xlvi. 11); holy and beautiful house are joined together; much 
more the beauty ef Ged that dwelt in the sanctuary. This renders him 
lovely to all his innocent creatures, though formidable to the guilty 
ones. A heathen philosopher could call it the beauty of the Divine 
essence, and say, that God was not so happy by an eternity of life, 
as by an excellency of virtue. And the angels’ song intimate it to 
be his glory (Isa. vi. 8); ‘The whole earth is full of thy glory ;” that 
is, of his holiness in his laws, and in his judgments against sin, that 
being the attribute applauded by them before. 

4, It is his very life. So it is called (Eph. iv. 18), “Alienated 
from the life of God,” that is, from the holiness of God: speaking of 
the opposite to it, the uncleanness and profaneness of the Gentiles. 
We are only alienated from that which we are bound to imitate; but 
this is the perfection alway set out as the pattern of our actions, 
“ Be ye holy, as I am holy;” no other is proposed as our copy; alien- 
ated from that purity of God, which is as much as his life, without 
which he could not live. If he were stripped of this, he would be a 
dead God, more than by the want of any other perfection. His 
swearing by it intimates as much; he swears often by his own life; 
“ As I live, saith the Lord:” so he swears by his holiness, as if it 
were his life, and more his life than any other. Let me not live, or 
let me not be holy, are all one in his oath. His Deity could not 
outlive the life of his purity. 

II. As it seems to challenge an excellency above all his other per- 
fections, so it is the glory of all the rest. As itis the glory of the God- 
head, so it is the glory of every perfection in the Godhead. As his 
power is the strength of them, so his holiness is the beauty of them. 
As all would be weak, without almightiness to back them, so all 
would be uncomely without holiness to adorn them. Should this be 
sullied, all the rest would lose their honor and their comfortable 
efficacy: as, at the same instant that the sun should lose its light, it 
would lose its heat, its strength, its generative and quickening virtue. 
As sincerity is the lustre of every grace in a Christian, so is purity 
the splendor of every attribute im the Godhead. His justice is a 
holy justice; his wisdom a holy wisdom; his arm of power a holy 
arm (Ps. xeviii. 1); his truth or promise a holy promise (Ps. cv. 42). 
Holy and true go hand in hand (Rev. vi. 10). His name, which 
signifies all his attributes in conjunction, is holy (Ps. ci. 1); yea, 
he is “righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works” (Ps. exlv. 
17): it is the rule of all his acts, the source of all his punishments. 
If every attribute of the Deity were a distinct member, purity would 
be the form, the soul, the spirit to animate them. Without it, his 

m Plutarch Eugubin. de Perenni Phil. lib. 6, cap. 6. 

VoL. .—8 


114 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


patience would be an indulgence to sin, his mercy a fondness, his 
wrath a madness, his power a tyranny, his wisdom an unworthy 
subtilty. Itis this gives a decorum to all. His mercy is not ex- 
ercised without it, since he pardons none but those that have an 
interest, by union, in the obedience of a Mediator, which was so 
delightful to his infinite purity. His justice, which guilty man is 
apt to tax with cruelty and violence in the exercise of it, is not acted 
out of the compass of this rule. In acts of man’s vindictive justice 
there is something of impurity, perturbation, passion, some mixture 
of cruelty; but none of these fall upon God in the severest acts of 
wrath. When God appears to Ezekiel, in the resemblance of fire, 
to signify his anger against the house of Judah for their idolatry, 
“from his loms downward” there was “the appearance of fire ;” but, 
from the loins upward, “‘the appearance of brightness, as the color of 
amber” (Ezek. viii. 2). His heart is clear in his most terrible acts 
of vengeance; it is a pure flame, wherewith he scorcheth and burns 
his enemies: he is holy in the most fiery appearance. This attribute, 
‘therefore, is never so much applauded, as when his sword hath been 
drawn, and he hath manifested the greatest fierceness against his ene- 
mies. The magnificent and triumphant expression of it in the text, 
follows just upon God's miraculous defeat and ruin of the Egyptian 
army: ‘The sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty 
waters:” then it follows, ‘‘ Who is like unto thee, O Lord, glorious 
in holiness?” And when it was so celebrated by the seraphims (Isa. 
vi. 3), it was when the ‘‘ posts moved, and the house was filled with 
smoke” (ver. 4), which are signs of anger (Ps. xvii. 7, 8). And 
when he was about to send Isaiah upon a message of spiritual and 
temporal judgments, that he would make the “ heart of that people 
fat, and their ears heavy, and their eyes shut; waste their cities with- 
out inhabitant, and their houses without man, and make the land 
desolate” (ver. 9-12): and the angels which here applaud him for 
his holiness, are the executioners of his justice, and here called sera- 
phims, from burning or fiery spirits, as being the ministers of his 
wrath. His justice is part of his holiness, whereby he doth reduce 
into order those things that are out of order. When he is consuming 
men by his fury, he doth not diminish, but. manifest purity (Zeph. 
iii. 5); “The just Lord is in the midst of her; he will do no iniquity.” 
Every action of his is free from all tincture of evil. It is also cele- 
brated with praise, by the four beasts about his throne, when he ap- 
pears in acovenant garb with a rainbow about his throne, and yet with 
thunderings and lhghtnings shot against his enemies (Rev. iv. 8, 
compared with ver. 3, 5), to show that all his acts of mercy, as well 
as justice, are clear from any stain. This is the crown of all his 
attributes, the life of all his decrees, the brightness of all his actions: 
nothing is decreed by him, nothing is acted by him, but what is 
worthy of the dignity, and becoming the honor, of this attribute. 
For the better understanding this attribute, observe, I. The nature 
of this holiness. IJ. The demonstration of it. II. The purity of 
his nature in all his acts about sin. IV. The use of all to ourselves. 
I. The nature of Divine holiness 7m general. The holiness of God 
negatively, is a perfect and unpolluted freedom from all evil. As we 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. LIS 


call gold pure that is not embased by any dross, and that garment 
clean that is free from any spot, so the nature of God is estranged 
from all shadow of evil, all imaginable contagion. Positively, It is 
the rectitude or integrity of the Divine nature, or that conformity of 
it, in affection and action, to the Divine will, as to his eternal law, 
whereby he works with a becomingness to his own excellency, and 
whereby he hath a delight and complacency in everything agreeable 
to his will, and an abhorrency of everything contrary thereunto. 
As there is no darkness in his understanding, so there is no spot in 
his will: as his mind is possessed with all truth, so there is no devia- 
tion in his will from it. He loves all truth and goodness; he hates 
all falsity and evil. In regard of his righteousness, he loves right- 
eousness (Ps. xi. 7); ‘‘ The righteous Lord loveth righteousness,” and 
‘hath no pleasure in wickedness” (Ps. v. 4). He values purity in 
his creatures, and detests all impurity, whether inward or outward. 
We may, indeed, distinguish the holiness of God from his righteous: 
negs in our conceptions: holiness is a perfection absolutely considered 
in the nature of God; righteousness, a perfection, as referred to 
others, in his actions towards them and upon them.” 

In particular, this property of the Divine nature is, 1. An essential 
and necessary perfection: he is essentially and necessarily holy. It 
is the essential glory of his nature: his holiness is as necessary as his 
being; as necessary as his omniscience: as he cannot but know what 
is right, so he cannot but do what is just. His understanding is not 
as created understanding, capable of ignorance as well as knowledge; 
so his will is not as created wills, capable of unrighteousness, as wel! 
as righteousness. ‘T'bere can be no contradiction or contrariety m 
the Divine nature, to know what is right, and to do what is wrong; 
if so, there would be a diminution of his blessedness, he would not 
be a God alway blessed, ‘blessed forever,” as he is (Rom. 1x. 5). 
He is as necessarily holy, as he is necessarily God; as necessarily 
without sin, as without change. As he was God from eternity, so he 
was holy from eternity. He was gracious, merciful, just in his own 
nature, and also holy; though no creature had been framed by him 
to exercise his grace, mercy, justice, or holiness upon.° If God 
had not created a world, he had, in his own nature, been Almighty, 
and able to create a world. If there never had been anything but 
himself, yet he had been omniscient, knowing everything that was 
within the verge and compass of his infinite power; so he was pure 
in his own nature, though he never had brought forth any rational 
creature whereby to manifest this purity. These perfections are so 
necessary, that the nature of God could not subsist without them. 
And the acts of those, ad intra, or within himself, are necessary ; for 
being omniscient in nature, there must be an act of knowledge of 
himself and his own nature. Being infinitely holy, an act of holiness 
in infinitely loving himself, must necessarily flow from this perfec- 
tion.e As the Divine will cannot but be perfect, so it cannot be 
wauting to render the highest love to itself, to its goodness, to the 
Divine nature, which is due to him. Indeed, the acts of those, ad 


2 Martin. de Deo, p. 86. ° Turretin. de Satisfact. p. 25, 
P Ochino, Predic. Part IIT. Bodie. 51, pp. 347, 348. 


116 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


extra, are not necessary, but upon a condition. To love righteous- 
ness, without himself, or to detect sin, or inflict punishment for the 
committing of it, could not have been, had there been no righteous 
creature for him to love, no sinning creature for him to loathe, and 
to exercise his justice upon, as the object of punishment. Some 
attributes require a condition to make the acts of them necessary ; 
2$ it is at God’s liberty, whether he will create a rational creature, 
or no; but when he decrees to make either angel or man, it is neces- 
sary, from the perfection of his nature, to make them righteous. It 
is at God’s liberty whether he will speak to man, or no; but if he 
doth, it is impossible for him to speak that which is false, because 
of his infinite perfection of veracity. It is at his liberty whether he 
will permit a creature to sin; but if he sees good to suffer it, 1t is im- 
possible but that he should detest that creature that goes cross to his 
righteous nature. His holiness is not solely an act of his will, for 
then he might be unholy as well as holy; he might love iniquity 
and hate righteousness; he might then command that which is good, 
and afterwards command that which is bad and unworthy; for what 
is only an act of his will, and not belonging to his nature, is indiffer- 
entto him. As the positive law he gave to Adam, of not eating the 
forbidden fruit, was a pure act of his will, he might have given him 
liberty to eat of it, if he had pleased, as well as prohibited him. But 
what is moral and good in its own nature, is necessarily willed by God, 
and cannot be changed by him, because of the transcendent eminency 
of his nature, and righteousness of his will. As it is impossible for 
God to command his creature to hate him, or to dispense with a 
creature for not loving him,—for this would be to command a thing 
intrinsically evil, the highest ingratitude, the very spirit of all wick- 
edness, which consists in the hating God,—yet, though God be thus 
necessarily holy, he is not so by a bare and simple necessity, as the 
sun shines, or the fire burns; but by a free necessity, not compelled 
thereunto, but inclined from the fulness of the perfection of his own 
nature and will; so as by no means he can be unholy, because he 
will not be unholy; it is against his nature to be so. 

2. God is only absolutely holy; “There is none holy as the 
Lord” (1 Sam. ii. 2); it is the peculiar glory of his nature; as 
there is none good but God, so none holy but God. No crea- 
ture can be essentially holy, because mutable; holiness is the sub- 
stance of God, but a quality and accident in a creature. God is in- 
finitely holy, creatures finitely holy. He is holy from himself, crea- 
tures are holy by derivation from him. He is not only holy, but 
holiness; holiness in the highest degree, is his sole prerogative. As 
the highest heaven is called the heaven of heavens, because it em- 
braceth in its circle all the heavens, and contains the magnitude of 
them, and hath a greater vastness above all that it encloseth, so is 
God the Holy of holies; he contains the holiness of all creatures put 
together, and infinitely more. As all the wisdom, excellency, and 
power of the creatures if compared with the wisdom, excellency, and 
power of God, is but folly, vileness, and weakness; so the highest 
created purity, if set in parallel with God, is but impurity and un- 
cleanness (Rev. xv. 4): “Thou only art holy.” It is like the light 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 127 


of a glow-worm to that of the sun (Job xiii. 15); ‘“ The heavens are 
not pure in his sight, and his angels he charged with folly” (Job 
iv. 18). Though God hath crowned the angels with an unspotted 
sanctity, and placed them ina habitation of glory, yet, as illustrious 
as they are, they have an unworthiness in their own nature to ap- 
pear before the throne of so holy a God; their holiness grows dim 
and pale in his presence. It is but a weak shadow of that Divine 
purity, whose light is so glorious, that it makes them cover their 
faces out of weakness to beholdit, and cover their feet out of shame 
in themselves. ‘hey are not pUre in his sight, because, though they 
love God (which is a principle of holiness) as much as they can, 
yet, not so much as he deserves; they love him with the intensest 
degree, according to their power; but not with the intensest degree, 
according to his own amiableness; for vey cannot infinitely love 
God, unless they were as infinite as God, and had an understanding 
of his perfections equal with himself, and as immense as his own 
knowledge. God, having an infinite knowledge of himself, can only 
have an infinite love to himself, and, consequently, an infinite holi- 
ness without any defect; because he loves himself according to the 
vastness of his own amiableness, which no finite being can. There- 
fore, though the angels be exempt from corruption and soil, they 
cannot enter into comparison with the purity of God, without ac- 
knowledgment of a dimness in themselves. Besides, he charges 
them with folly, and puts no trust in them; because they have the 
power of sinning, though not the act of sinning; they have a pos- 
sible folly in their own nature to be charged with. Holiness is a 
quality separable from them, but it is inseparable from God. Had 
they not at first a mutability in their nature, none of them could 
have sinned, there had been no devils; but because some of them 
sinned, the rest might have sinned. And though the standing 
angels shall never be changed, yet they are still changeable in their 
own nature, and their standing is due to grace, not to nature; and 
though they shall be for ever preserved, yet they are not, nor ever 
can be, immutable by nature, for then they should stand upon the 
same bottom with God himself; but they are supported by grace 
against that changeableness of nature which is essential to a crea- 
ture; the Creator only hath immortality, that is, immutability 
(1 Tim. ui. 16). It is as certain a truth, that no creature can be 
naturally immutable and impeccable, as that God cannot create any 
anything actually polluted and imperfect. It is as possible that 
the highest creature may sin, as it is possible that it may be anni- 
hilated; it may become not holy, as it may become not a crea- 
ture, but nothing. The holiness of a creature may be reduced 
imto nothing, as well as his substance; but the holiness of the 
Creator cannot be diminished, dimmed, or overshadowed (James i. 
17): “ He is the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness or 
shadow of turning.” It is as impossible his holiness should be 
blotted, as that his Deity should be extinguished: for whatsoever 
creature hath essentially such or such qualities, cannot be stripped 
of them, without being turned out of its essence. As aman is €s- 
sentially rational; and if he ceaseth to be rational, he ceaseth to be 


118 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


man. The sun is essentially luminous; if it should become dark in 
its own body, it would cease to be the sun. In regard to this abso- 
lute and only holiness of God, it is thrice repeated by the seraphims 
(Isa. vi. 3). The three-fold repetition of a word notes the certainty 
or absoluteness of the thing, or the irreversibleness of the resolve ; 
as (Hzek. xxi. 27), “I will overturn, overturn, overturn,” notes the 
certainty of the judgment; also, (Rey. viii. 8), ‘‘ Woe, woe, woe;” 
three times repeated, signifies the same. The holiness of God is so 
absolutely peculiar to him, that it can no more be expressed in 
creatures, than his omnipotence, wiitreby they may be able to create 
a world; or his omniscience, whereby they may be capable of know- 
ing all things, and knowing God as he knows himself. 

3. God is so holy, that he cannot possibly approve of any evil done 
by another, but doth perfectly abhor it; it would not else be a 
glorious holiness (Ps, v. 3). ‘‘ He hath no pleasure in wickedness.” 
He doth not only love that which is just, but abhor, with a perfect 
hatred, all things contrary to the rule of righteousness. Holiness 
can no more approve of sin than it can commit it: to be delighted 
with the evil in another's act, contracts a guilt, as well as the com- 
mission of it; for approbation of a thing is a consent to it. Some- 
times the approbation of an evil in another is a more grievous 
crime than the act itself, as appears in Rom. i. 32, who knowing 
the judgment of God, “not only” do the same, but have pleasure in 
them that doit ;” where the ‘‘ not only” manifests it to be a greater guilt 
to take pleasureinthem. Hvery sin is aggravated by the delight in it; 
to take pleasure in the evil of another’s action, shows a more ardent 
affection and love to sin, than the committer himself may have. This, 
therefore, can as little fall upon God, as to do an evil act himself; yet, 
as a man may be delighted with the consequences of another’s sin, 
as it may occasion some public good, or private good to the guilty 
person, as sometimes it may be an occasion of his repentance, when 
the horridness of a fact stares him in the face, and occasions a self- 
reflection for that, and other crimes, which is attended with an in- 
dignation against them, and sincere remorse for them; so God is 
pleased with those good things his goodness and wisdom bring forth 
upon the occasion of sin. But in regard of his holiness, he cannot 
approve of the evil, whence his infinite wisdom drew forth his own 
glory, and his creature’s good. His pleasure is not in the sinful act 
of the creature, but in the act of his own goodness and skill, turn- 
ing it to another end than what the creature aimed at. 

(1.) He abhors it necessarily. Holiness is the glory of the Deity, 
therefore necessary. The nature of God is so holy, that he cannot 
but hate it (Hab. 1. 18): “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold 
evil, and canst not look on iniquity :” he is more opposite to it than 
light to darkness, and, therefore, it can expect no countenance from 
him. A love of holiness cannot be without a hatred of everything 
that is contrary to it. As God necessarily loves himself, so he must 
necessarily hate everything that is against himself: and as he loves 
himself for his own excellency and holiness, he must necessarily de- 
test, whatsoever is repugnant to his holiness, because of the evil of 
it. Since he is infinitely good, he cannot but love goodness, as i is 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 119 


a resemblance to himself, and cannot but abhor unrighteousness, as be- 
ing most distant from him, and contrary to him. If he have any 
esteem for his own perfections, he must needs have an implacable 
aversion to all that is so repugnant to him, that would, if it were 
possible, destroy him, and is a point directed, not only against his 
glory, but against his life. If he did not hate it, he would hate 
himself: for since righteousness is his image, and sin would deface 
his image; if he did not love his image, and loathe what is against 
his image, he would loathe himself, he would be an enemy to his 
own nature. Nay, if it were possible for him to love it, it were 
possible for him not to be holy, it were possible then for him to deny 
himself, and will that he were no God, which is a palpable contra- 
diction.4 Yet this necessity in God of hating sin, is not a brutish 
necessity, such as is in mere animals, that avoid, by a natural in- 
stinct, not of cheice, what is prejudicial to them; but most free, as 
well as necessary, arising from an infinite knowledge of his own na- 
ture, and of the evil nature of sin, and the contrariety of it to his 
own excellency, and the order of his works. 

(2.) Therefore intensely. Nothing do men act for more than their 
glory. As he doth infinitely, and therefore perfectly know himself, 
so he infinitely, and therefore perfectly knows what is contrary to 
himself, and, as according to the manner and measure of his knowl- 
edge of himself, is his love to himself, as infinite as his knowledge, 
and therefore inexpressible and unconceivable by us: so, from the 
perfection of his knowledge of the evil of sin, which is infinitely 
above what any creature can have, doth arise a displeasure against 
it suitable to that knowledge. In creatures the degrees of affection 
to, or aversion from a thing, are suited to the strength of their ap 
prehensions of the good or evil in them. God knows not only the 
workers of wickedness, but the wickedness of their works (Job xi. 
11), for “he knows vain men, he sees wickedness also.” The ve- 
hemency of this hatred is expressed variously in Scripture; he 
loathes it so, that he is impatient of beholding it; the very sight of it 
affects him with detestation (Hab. i. 13); he hates the first spark of 
it in the imagination (Zech. viii. 17); with what variety of expres- 
sions doth he repeat his indignation at their polluted services(Amos 
v. 21, 22); “I hate, I detest, I despise, I will not smell, I will not 
regard; take away from me the noise of thy songs, I will not hear!” 
So, (Isa. i. 14), “My soul hates, they are a trouble to me, I am 
weary to bear them.” It is the abominable thing that he hates (Jer. 
xliv. 4); he is vexed and fretted at it (Isa. lxiii. 10; Ezek. xvi. 33). 
He abhors it so, that his hatred redoeunds upon the person that com- 
mits it. (Ps. v. 5), “He hates all workers of iniquity.” Sin is the 
only primary object of his displeasure: he is not displeased with the 
nature of man as man, for that was derived from him; but with the 
nature of man as sinful, which is from the sinner himself. Whena 
man hath but one object for the exercise of all his anger, it 1s 
stronger than when diverted to many objects: a mighty torrent, 
when diverted into many streams, is weaker than when it comes in 
a full body upon one place only. The infinite anger and hatred of 

4 Turretin. de Satisfact. pp. 35, 36. 


120 CHARNOCK ON THE ATFRIBUTES. 


God, which is as infinite as his love and mercy, has no other object, 
against which he directs the mighty force of it, but only unright 
eousness. He hates no person for all the penal evils upon him, though 
they were more by ten thousand times than Job was struck with, 
but only for his sin. Again, sin being only evil, and an unmixed 
evil, tuere is nothing in it that can abate the detestation of God, or 
balance his hatred of it; there is not the least grain of goodness in 
it, to incline him to the least affection to any part of it. ‘This ha- 
tred cannot but be intense; for as the more any creature is sancti- 
fied, the more is he advanced in the abhorrence of that which is 
contrary to holiness; therefore, God being the highest, most absolute 
and infinite holiness, doth infinitely, and therefore intensely, hate 
unholiness; being infinitely righteous, doth infinitely abhor un- 
righteousness; being infinitely true, doth infinitely abhor falsity, as 
it 1s the greatest and most deformed evil. As it 1s from the right- 
eousness of his nature that he hath a content and satisfaction in 
righteousness (Ps. xi. 7), “The righteous Lord loveth righteous- 
ness ;” so it is from the same righteousness of his nature, that he de- 
tests whatsoever is morally evil: as his nature therefore is infinite, 
so must his abhorrence be. 

(8.) Therefore universally, because necessarily and intensely. He 
doth not hate it in one, and indulge it in another, but loathes it 
wherever he finds it; not one worker of iniquity is exempt from it 
(Ps. v. 5): “Thou hatest all workers of iniquity.” For it is not 
sin, as in this or that person, or as great or little; but sin, aS sin 1s 
the object of his hatred; and, therefore, let the person be never so 
great, and have particular characters of his image upon him, it se- 
cures him not from God’s hatred of any evil action he shall commit. 
He is a jealous God, jealous of his glory (Exod. xx. 5); a metaphor, 
taken from jealous husbands, who will not endure the least adultery 
in their wives, nor God the least defection of man from his law. 
Every act of sin is a spiritual adultery, denying God to be the chief 
good, and giving that prerogative by that act to some vile thing. 
He loves it no more in his own people than he doth in his enemies; 
he frees them not from his rod, the testimony of his loathing their 
crimes: whosoever sows iniquity, shall reap affliction. It might be 
thought that he affected their dross, if he did not refine them, and — 
loved their filth, if he did not cleanse them; because of his detesta- 
tion of their sin, he will not spare them from the furnace, though 
because of love to their persons in Christ, he will exempt them from 
Tophet. How did the sword ever and anon drop down upon David's 
family, after his unworthy dealing in Uriah’s case, and cut off ever 
and anon some of the branches of it? He doth sometimes punish 
it more severely in this life in his own people, than in others. Upon 
Jonah’s disobedience a storm pursues him, anda whale devours him, 
while the profane world lived in their lusts without control. Moses, 
for one act of unbelief, is excluded from Canaan, when greater sin- 
ners attained that happiness. It is not a light punishment, but a 
vengeance he takes on their inventions (Ps. xcix, 8), to manifest that 
he hates sin as sin, and not because the worst persons commit it. 
Perhaps, had a profane man touched the ark, the hand of God had 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 121 


not so suddenly reached him; but when Uzzah, a man zealous for 
him, as may be supposed by his care for the support of the tottering 
ark, would step out of his place, he strikes him down for his dis- 
obedient action, by the side of the ark, which he would indirectly 
(as not being a Levite) sustain (2 Sam. vi. 7). Nor did our Saviour 
so sharply reprove the Pharisees, and turn so short from them as he 
did from Peter, when he gave a carnal advice, and contrary to that 
wherein was to be the greatest manifestation of God’s holiness, wz. 
the death of Christ (Matt. xvi. 23). He calls him Satan, a name 
sharper than the title of the devil’s children wherewith he marked 
the Pharisees, and given (besides him) to none but Judas, who made 
a profession of love to him, and was outwardly ranked in the num- 
ber of his disciples. A gardener hates a weed the more for being 
in the bed with the most precious flowers. God’s hatred is univer- 
sally fixed against sin, and he hates it as much in those whose per- 
sons shall not fall under his eternal anger, as being secured in the 
arms of a Redeemer, by whom the guilt is wiped off, and the filth 
shall be totally washed away: though he hates their sin, and cannot 
but hate it, yet he loves their persons, as being united as members 
to the Mediator and mystical Head. A man may love a gangrened 
member, because it is a member of his own body, or a member of a 
dear relation, but he loathes the gangrene in it more than in those 
wherein he is not so much concerned. Though God’s hatred of be- 
lievers’ persons is removed by faith in the satisfactory death of Jesus 
Christ, yet his antipathy against sin was not taken away by that 
blood; nay, it was impossible it should. It was never designed, nor 
had it any capacity to alter the unchangeable nature of God, but to 
manifest the unspottedness of his will, and his eternal aversion to 
anvthing that was contrary to the purity of his Being, and the 
righteousness of his laws. 

(4.) Perpetually: this must necessarily follow upon the others. 
He can no more cease to hate impurity than he can cease to love 
holiness: if he should in the least instant approve of anything that 
is filthy, in that. moment he would disapprove of his own nature and 
being; there would be an interruption in his love of himself, which 
is as eternal as it is infinite. How can he love any sin which is con- 
trary to his nature, but for one moment, without hating his own na- 
ture, which is essentially contrary to sin? ‘Two contraries cannot be 
loved at the same time; God must first begin to hate himself before 
he can approve of any evil which is directly opposite to himself. 
We, indeed, are changed with a temptation, sometimes bear an aftfec- 
tion to it, and sometimes testify an indignation against it; but God 
is always the same without any shadow of change, and “is angry 
with the wicked every day” (Ps. vii. 11), that is, uninterruptedly in 
the nature of his anger, though not in the effects of it. God indeed 
may be reconciled to the sinner, but never to the sin; for then he 
should renounce himself, deny his own essence and his own divinity, 
if his inclinatioys to the love of goodness, and his aversion from evil, 
could be changed, if he suffered the contempt of the one, and en- 
couraged the practice of the other. 

4. God is so holy, that he cannot but love holiness in others. 


122 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


Not that he owes anything to his creature, but from the unspeakable 
holiness of his nature, whence affections to all things that bear a re- 
semblance of him do flow; as light shoots out from the sun, or any 
glittering body: it is essential to the infinite righteousness of his na- 
ture to love righteousness wherever he beholds it (Ps. xi. 7): “The 
righteous Lord loveth righteousness.” He cannot, because of his na- 
ture, but love that which bears some agreement with his nature, that 
which is the curious draught of his own wisdom and purity: he can- 
not but be delighted with a copy of himself: he would not have a 
holy nature, if he did not love holiness in every nature: his own 
nature would be denied by him, if he did not affect everything that 
had a stamp of his own nature upon it. There was indeed nothing 
without God, that could invite him to manifest such goodness to 
man, as he did in creation: but after he had stamped that rational 
nature with a righteousness convenient for it, it was impossible but 
that he should ardently love that impression of himself, because he 
_loves his own Deity, and consequently all things which are any sparks 
and images of it: and were the devils capable of an act of righteous- 
ness, the holiness of his nature would incline him to love it, even in 
those dark and revolted spirits. | 

5. God is so holy, that he cannot positively will or encourage sin 
in any. How can he give any encouragement to that which he can- 
not in the least approve of, or look upon without loathing, not only 
the crime, but the criminal? Light may sooner be the cause of 
darkness than holiness itself be the cause of unholiness, absolutely 
contrary to it: it is a contradiction, that he that is the Fountain of 
good should be the source of evil; as if the same fountain should 
bubble up both sweet and bitter streams, salt and fresh (James iii. 
11); smce whatsoever good is in man acknowledges God for its au- 
thor, it follows that men are evil by their own fault. There is no 
need for men to be incited to that to which the corruption of their 
own nature doth so powerfully bend them. Water hath a forcible 
principle in its own nature to carry it downward; it needs no force 
to hasten the motion: ‘God tempts no man, but every man is drawn 
away by his own lust” (James i. 18, 14). All the preparations for 
glory are from God (Rom. ix. 23); but men are said to “ be fitted to 
destruction” (ver. 22); but God is not said to fit them; they, by 
their iniquities, fit themselves for ruin, and he, by his long-suffering, 
keeps the destruction from them for awhile. | 

(1.) God cannot command any unrighteousness. As all virtue is 
summed up in a love to God, so all iniquity is summed up in an en- 
mity to God: every wicked work declares a man an enemy to God 
(Col. i. 21): “ enemies in your minds by wicked works.” If he could 
command his creature anything which bears an enmity in its nature 
to himself, he would then implicitly command the hatred of himself, 
and he would be, in some measure, a hater of himself: he that com- 
mands another to deprive him of his life, cannot be said to bear any 
love to his own life. God can never hate himself, and therefore can- 
not command anything that is hateful to him and tends to a hating 
of him, and driving the creature further from him; in that very mo- 
ment that God should command such a thing, he would cease to be 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 123 


good. What can be more absurd to imagine, than that Infinite 
Goodness should enjoin a thing contrary to itself, and contrary to 
the essential duty of a creature, and order him to do anything that 
bespeaks an enmity to the nature of the Creator, or a deflouring and 
disparaging his works? God cannot but love himself, and his own 
goodness; he were not otherwise good; and, therefore, cannot order 
the creature to do anything opposite to this goodness, or anything 
hurtful to the creature itself, as unrighteousness is. 

(2.) Nor can God secretly inspire any evil into us. It is as much 
against his nature to incline the heart to sin as it is to command it: 
as it is impossible but that he should love himself, and therefore im- 
possible to enjoin anything that tends to a hatred of himself; by the 
same reason it is as impossible that he should infuse such a principle 
in the heart, that might carry a man out to any act of enmity against 
him. ‘To enjoin one thing, and incline to another, would be an ar- 
gument of such insincerity, unfaithfulness, contradiction to itself, 
that it cannot be conceived to fall within the compass of the Divine 
nature (Deut. xxxii. 4), who is a “ God without iniquity,” because 
“a God of truth” and sincerity, “just and right is he.” ‘To bestow 
excellent faculties upon man in creation, and incline him, by a sud- 
den impulsion, to things contrary to the true end of him, and induce 
an inevitable ruin upon that work which he had composed with so 
much wisdom and goodness, and pronounced good with so much de- 
light and pleasure, is inconsistent with that love which God bears to 
the creature of his own framing: to incline his will to that which 
would render him the object of his hatred, the fuel for his justice, 
and sink him into deplorable misery, it is most absurd, and unchris- 
tian-like to imagine. 

(3.) Nor can God necessitate man to sin. Indeed sin cannot be 
committed by force; there is no sin but is in some sort voluntary ; 
voluntary in the root, or voluntary in the branch; voluntary by an 
immediate act of the will, or voluntary by a general or natural incli- 
nation of the will. That is not a crime to which a man is violenced, 
without any concurrence of the faculties of the soul to that act; it is 
indeed not an act, but a passion; a man that is forced is not an 
agent, but a patient under the force: but what necessity can there 
be upon man from God, since he hath implanted such a principle in 
him, that he cannot desire anything but what is good, either really 
or apparently; and if a man mistakes the object, it is his own fault ; 
for God hath endowed him with reason to discern, and liberty of 
will to choose upon that judgment. And though it is to be ac- 
knowledged that God hath an absolute sovereign dominion over his 
creature, without any limitation, and may do what he pleases, and 
dispose of it according to his own will, as a “ potter doth with his 
vessel” (Rom. ix. 21); according as the church speaks (Isa. Ixiv. 8), 
“We are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of 
thy hand;” yet he cannot pollute any undefiled creature by virtue 
of that sovereign power, which he hath to do what he will with it; 
because such an act would be contrary to the foundation and right 
of his dominion, which consists in the excellency of his nature, his 
immense wisdom, and unspotted purity; if God should therefore do 


124 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


any such act, he would expunge the right of his dominion by blot- 
ting out that nature which renders him fit for that dominion, and the 
exercise of it. Any dominion which is exercised without the rules 
of goodness, is not a true sovereignty, but an insupportable tyranny. 
God would cease to be a rightful Sovereign if he ceased to be good; 
and he would cease to be good, if he did command, necessitate, or by 
any positive operation, incline inwardly the heart of a creature di- 
rectly to that which were morally evil, and contrary to the eminency 
of his own nature. But that we may the better conceive of this, let 
us trace man in his first fall, whereby he subjected himself and all 
his posterity to the curse of the law and hatred of God; we shall 
find no footsteps, either of precept, outward force, or inward impul- 
sion.s The plain story of man’s apostasy dischargeth God from any 
interest in the crime as an encouragement, and excuseth him from 
any appearance of suspicion, when he showed him the tree he had 
reserved, as a mark of his sovereignty, and forbad him to eat of the 
fruit of it; he backed the prohibition with the threatening the great- 
est evil, viz. death ; which could be understood to imply nothing less 
than the loss of all his happiness; and in that couched an assurance 
of the perpetuity of his felicity, if he did not, rebelliously, reach forth 
his hand to take and ‘“‘eat of the fruit” (Gen. 1.16, 17). It is true 
God had given that fruit an excellency, “a goodness for food, and a 
pleasantness to the eye” (Gen. i. 6). He had given man an appe- 
tite, whereby he was capable of desiring so pleasant a fruit; but God 
had, by creation, arranged it under the command of reason, if man 
would have kept it in its due obedience; he had fixed a severe 
threatening to bar the unlawful excursions of it; he had allowed him 
a multitude of other fruits in the garden, and given him liberty 
enough to satisfy his curiosity in all, except this only. Could there 
be anything more obliging to man, to let God have his reserve of 
that one tree, than the grant of all the rest ; and more deterring from 
any disobedient attempt than so strict a command, spirited with so 
dreadful a penalty ? God did not solicit him to rebel against him ; 
a solicitation to it, and a command against it, were inconsistent. 
The devil assaults him, and God permitted it, and stands, as it were, 
a spectator of the issue of the combat. There could be no necessity 
upon man to listen to, and entertain the suggestions of the serpent ; 
he had a power to resist him, and he had an answer ready for all the 
devil’s arguments, had they been multiplied to more than they were ; 
the opposing the order of God had been a sufficient confutation of 
all the devil’s plausible reasonings; that Creator, who hath given me 
my being, hath ordered me not to eat of it. Though the pleasure 
of the fruit might allure him, yet the force of his reason might have 
quelled the liquorishness of his sense; the perpetual thinking of, and 
sounding out, the command of God, had silenced both Satan and his 
own appetite ; had disarmed the tempter, and preserved his sensitive 
part in its due subjection. What inclination can we suppose there 
could be from the Creator, when, upon the very first offer of the 
temptation, Eve opposes to the tempter the prohibition and threat- 
ening of God, and strains it to a higher peg than we find God had 
r Amyrald. Disert. pp. 103, 104. * Amyrald, Defens. de Calvin. pp. 151, 152. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 125 


delivered it in? For in Gen. i. 17, it is, “ You shall not eat of it;” 
but she adds (Gen. iii. 3), ‘Neither shall you touch it;” which was 
a remark that might have had more influence to restrain her. Had 
our first parents kept this fixed upon their understandings and 
thoughts, that God had forbidden any such act as the eating of the 
fruit, and that he was true to execute the threatening he had uttered, 
of which truth of God they could not but have a natural notion, with 
what ease might they have withstood the devil’s attack, and defeated 
his design! And it had been easy with them, to have kept their 
understandings by the force of such a thought, from entertaining any 
contrary imagination. There is no ground for any jealousy of any 
encouragements, inward impulsions, or necessity from God in this 
affair. A discharge of God from this first sin will easily induce a 
freedom of him from all other sins which follow upon it. God doth 
not then encourage, or excite, or incline to sin. How can he excite 
to that which, when it is done, he will be sure to condemn? How 
can he be a righteous Judge to sentence a sinner to misery for a 
crime acted by a secret inspiration from himself? Iniquity would 
deserve no reproof from him, if he were any way positively the 
author of it. Were God the author of it im us, what is the reason 
our own consciences accuse us for it, and convince us of it? that, 
being God’s deputy, would not accuse us of it, if the sovereign power 
by which it acts, did incline us to it. How can he be thought to 
excite to that which he hath enacted such severe laws to restrain, or 
incline man to that which he hath so dreadfully punished in his Son, 
and which it is impossible but the excellency of his nature must in- 
cline him eternally to hate? We may sooner imagine, that a pure 
flame shall engender cold, and darkness be the offspring of a sun- 
beam, as imagine such a thing as this. ‘“ What shall we say, is there 
unrighteousness with God? God forbid.” The apostle execrates 
such a thought (Rom. ix. 14.) 

6. God cannot act any evil, in or by himself. If he cannot ap- 
prove of sin in others, nor excite any to iniquity, which is less, he 
cannot commit evil himself, which is greater; what he cannot pos- 
itively will in another, can never be willed in himself; he cannot do 
evil through ignorance, because of his infinite knowledge; mor 
through weakness, because of his infinite power; nor through malice, 
because of his infinite rectitude. He cannot will any unjust thing, 
because, having an infinitely perfect understanding, he cannot judge 
that to be true which is false; or that to be good which is evil: his 
will is regulated by his wisdom. If he could will any unjust and 
irrational thing, his will would be repugnant to his understanding ; 
there would be a disagreement in God, will against mind, and will 
against wisdom ; he being the highest reason, the first truth, cannot 
do an unreasonable, false, defective action. It is not a defect in God 
that he cannot do evil, but a fulness and excellency of power; as it 
is not a weakness in the light, but the perfection of it, that it is un- 
able to produce darkness; ‘ God is the Father of lights, with whom 
is no variableness” (James i. 17). Nothing pleases him, nothing 1s 
acted by him, but what is beseeming the infinite excellency of his 
own nature; the voluntary necessity whereby God cannot be unjust, 


e 


126 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


renders him a God blessed forever; he would hate himself for the 
chief good, if, in any of his actions, he should disagree with his good- 
ness. He cannot do any unworthy thing, not because he wants an 
infinite power, but because he is possessed of an infinite wisdom, and 
adorned with an infinite purity; and being infinitely pure, cannot 
have the least mixture of impurity. As if you can suppose fire in- 
finitely hot, you cannot suppose it to have the least mixture of cold- 
ness ; the better anything is, the more unable it is to do evil; God 
being the only goodness, can as little be changed in his goodness as 
in his essence. 

II. The next inquiry is, The proof that God is holy, or the mani- 
festation of it. Purity is as requisite to the blessedness of God, as 
to the being of God; as he could not be God without being blessed, 
so he could not be blessed without being holy. He is called by the 
title of Blessed, as well as by that of holy (Mark xiv. 61); “ Art 
thou the Christ, the son of the Blessed?” Unrighteousness is a misery 
and turbulency in any spirit wherein it is; for it is a privation of an 
excellency which ought to be in every intellectual being, and what 
can follow upon the privation of an excellency but unquietness and 
grief, the moth of happiness? An unrighteous man, as an unright- 
eous man, can never be blessed, though he were in a local heaven. 
Had God the least spot upon his purity, it would render him as mis- 
erable in the midst of his infinite sufficiency, as imiquity renders a 
man in the confluence of his earthly enjoyments. The holiness and 
felicity of God are inseparable in him. The apostle intimates that 
the heathen made an attempt to sully his blessedness, when they 
would liken him to corruptible, mutable, impure man (Rom. i. 28, 
25): ‘They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an 
image, made like to corruptible man ;” and after, he entitles God a 
“God blessed forever.” The gospel is therefore called, ‘‘ The glorious 
gospel of the blessed God” (1 Tim. i. 11), in regard of the holiness 
of the gospel precepts, and in regard of the declaration of the holi- 
ness of God in all the streams and branches, wherein his purity, in 
which his blessedness consists, is as illustrious as any other perfection 
of the Divine Being. God hath highly manifested this attribute in 
the state of nature; in the legal administration; in the dispensation 
of the gospel. His wisdom, goodness, and power, are declared in 
creation; his sovereign authority in his law; his grace and mercy 
in the gospel, and his righteousness in all. Suitable to this threefold 
state, may be that eternal repetition of his holiness in the prophecy 
(Isa. vi. 8); holy, as Creator and Benefactor; holy, as Lawgiver and 
Judge; holy, as Restorer and Redeemer. 

First, His holiness appears, as he is Creator, in framing man in a 
perfect uprightness. Angels, as made by God, could not be evil; for 
God beheld his own works with pleasure, and could not have pro- 
nounced them all good, had some been created pure, and others im- 
pure; two moral contrarieties could not be good. ‘I'he angels had a 
first estate, wherein they were happy (Jude 6); and had they not 
left their own habitation and state, they could not have been miser- 
able. But, because the Scripture speaks only of the creation of 
man, we will consider, that the human nature was well strung and 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. LaF 


tuned by God, according to the note of his own holiness (Eccles. vii. 
29); “God hath made man upright:” he had declared his power in 
other creatures, but would declare in his rational creature, what he 
most valued in himself; and, therefore, created him upright, with a 
wisdom which is the rectitude of the mind, with a purity which is 
the rectitude of the will and affections. He had declared a purity 
in other creatures, as much as they were capable of, viz. in the exact 
tuning them to answer one another. And that God, who so well 
tuned and composed other creatures, would not make man a jarring 
instrument, and place a cracked creature to be Lord of the rest of his 
earthly fabric. God, being holy, could not set his seal upon any 
rational creature, but the impression would be like himself, pure and 
holy also; he could not be created with an error in his understand- 
ing; that had been inconsistent with the goodness of God to his 
rational creature; if so, the erroneous motion of the will, which was 
to follow the dictates of the understanding, could not have been im- 
puted to him as his crime, because it would have been, not a volun- 
tary, but a necessary effect of his nature; had there been an error in 
the first wheel, the error of the next could not have been imputed 
to the nature of that, but to the irregular motion of the first wheel 
in the engine. The sin of men and angels, proceeded not from any 
natural defect in their understandings, but from inconsideration; he 
that was the author of harmony in his other creatures, could not be 
the author of disorder in the chief of his works. Other creatures 
were his footsteps, but man was his image (Gen. 1. 26, 27): “ Let us 
make man in our image, after our likeness;” which, though it seems 
to imply no more in that place, than an image of his dominion over 
the creatures, yet the apostle raises it a peg higher, and gives usa 
larger interpretation of it (Col. iii. 10): ‘‘ And have put on the new 
man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that 
created him ;” making it to consist in a resemblance to his righteous- 
ness. Image, say some, notes the form, as man was a spirit in regard 
of his soul; likeness, notes the quality implanted in his spiritual na- 
ture; the image of God was drawn in him, both as he was a rational, 
and as he was a holy creature. The creatures manifested the being 
of a superior power, as their cause, but the righteousness of the first 
man evidenced, not only a sovereign power, as the donor of his being, 
but a holy power, as the pattern of his work. God appeared to be a 
holy God in the righteousness of his creature, as well as an under- 
standing God in the reason of his creature, while he formed him 
with all necessary knowledge in his mind and all necessary upright- 
ness in his will. The law of love to God, with his whole soul, his 
whole mind, his whole heart and strength, was originally written 
upon his nature; all the parts of his nature were framed in a moral 
conformity with God, to answer this law, and imitate God in his 
purity, which consists in a love of himself, and his own goodness 
and excellency. Thus doth the clearness of the stream point us to 
the purer fountain, and the brightness of the beam evidence a greater 
splendor in the sun which shot it out. 

Secondly, His holiness appears in his laws, as he is a Lawgiver 
anda Judge. Since man was bound to be subject to God, as a crea- 


¢ 


128 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


ture, and had a capacity to be ruled by the law, as an understand- 
ing and willing creature; God gave him a law, taken from the 
depths of his holy nature, and suited to the original faculties of man. 
The rules which God hath fixed in the world, are not the resolves 
of bare will, but result particularly from the goodness of his nature ; 
they are nothing else but the transcripts of his infinite detestation 
of sin, as he is the unblemished governor of the world. This being 
the most adorable property of his nature, he hath impressed it upon 
that law which he would have inviolably observed as a perpetual 
rule for our actions, that we may every moment think of this beau- 
tiful perfection. God can command nothing but what hath some 
similitude with the rectitude of his own nature; all his laws, every 
paragraph of them, therefore, scent of this, and glitter with it (Deut. 
iv. 8): “ What nation hath statutes and judgments so righteous as 
all this law I set before you this day ?” and, therefore, they are com- 
pared to fine gold, that hath no speck or dross (Ps. xix. 10). 

- This purity is evident—1l. In the moral law, or law of nature. 2. 
In the ceremonial law. 8. In the allurements annexed to it, for 
keeping it, and the affrightments to restrain from the breaking of it. 
4, In the judgments inflicted for the violation of it. 

1. In the moral law: which is therefore dignified with the title of 
Holy, twice in one verse (Rom. vii. 12): “ Wherefore, the law is holy, 
and the commandment is holy, just, and good ;” it being the express 
image of God’s will, as our Saviour was of his person, and bearing a re- 
semblance to the purity of hisnature. The tables of this law were put 
into the ark, that, as the mercy seat was to represent the grace of God, 
so the law was to represent the holiness of God (Ps. xix.1). The Psalm- 
ist, after he had spoken of the glory of God in the heavens, wherein the 
power of God is exposed to our view, introduceth the law, wherein the 
purity of God is evidenced to our minds (ver. 7, 8, &c.): ‘“ Perfect, pure, 
clean, righteous,” are the titles given to it. It is clearer in holiness 
than the sun is in brightness; and more mighty in itself, to command 
the conscience, than the sun is to run its race. As the holiness of 
the Scripture demonstrates the divinity of its Author; so the holi- 
ness of the law doth the purity of the Lawgiver. 

(1.) The purity of this law is seen in the matter of it. It prescribes 
all that becomes a creature towards God, and all that becomes one 
creature towards another of his own rank and kind. ‘The image of 
God is complete in the holiness of the first table, and the righteous- 
ness of the second; which is intimated by the apostle (Hph. iv. 24), 
the one being the rule of what we owe to God, the other being the 
rule of what we owe to man: there is no good but it enjoins, and 
no evil but it disowns. It is not sickly and lame in any part of it; 
not a good action, but it gives it its due praise; and not an evil ac- 
tion, but it sets a condemning mark upon. ‘T’he commands of it are 
frequently in Scripture called judgments, because they rightly judge 
of good and evil; and are a clear light to inform the judgment of 
man in the knowledge of both. By this was the understanding of 
David enlightened to know every false way, and to “ hate it” (Ps. 
exix. 104). There is no case can happen, but may meet with a de- 
termination from it; it teaches men the noblest manner of living a 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 129 


ufe like God himself; honorably for the Lawgiver, and joyfully for 
the subject. It directs us to the highest end; sets us at a distance 
from all base and sordid practices ; it proposeth light to the under- 
standing, and goodness to the will. It would tune all the strings, 
set right all the orders of mankind: it censures the least mote, coun- 
tenanceth not any stain in the life. Nota wanton glance can meet 
with any justification from it (Matt. v. 28); not arash anger but it 
frowns upon (ver. 22). As the Lawgiver wants nothing as an ad- 
dition to his blessedness, so his law wants nothing as a supplement 
to its perfection (Deut. iv. 2). What our Saviour seems to add, is 
not an addition to mend any defects, but a restoration of it from the 
corrupt glosses, wherewith the Scribes and Pharisees had eclipsed 
the brightness of it: they had curtailed it, and diminished part of 
its authority, cutting off its empire over the least evil, and left its 
power only to check the grosser practices. But Christ restores it to 
the due extent of its sovereignty, and shows it those dimensions in 
which the holy men of God considered it as ‘‘ exceeding broad” (Ps. 
cxix. 96), reaching to all actions, all motions, all circumstances at- 
tending them; full of inexhaustible treasures of righteousness. And 
though this law, since the fall, doth irritate sin, it is no disparage- 
ment, but a testimony to the righteousness of it; which the apostle 
manifests by his ‘“ Wherefore (Rom. vii. 8), sin, taking occasion by 
the commandment, wrought in me all manner of concupiscence ;” 
and repeating the same sense (ver. 11), subjoins a ‘‘ Wherefore” 
(ver. 12), ‘“‘ Wherefore the law is holy.” The rising of men’s sinful 
hearts against the law of God, when it strikes with its preceptive 
and minatory parts upon their consciences, evidenceth the holiness 
of the law and the Lawgiver. In its own nature it is a directing 
rule, but the malignant nature of sin is exasperated by it; as an 
hostile quality in a creature will awaken itself at the appearance of 
its enemy. ‘The purity of this beam, and transcript of God, bears 
witness to a greater clearness and beauty in the sun and original. 
Undefiled streams manifest an untainted fountain. 

(2.) It is seen in the manner of its precepts. As it prescribes all 
good, and forbids all evil, so it doth enjoin the one, and banish the 
other as such. The laws of men command virtuous things; not as 
virtuous in themselves, but as useful for human society ; which the 
magistrate is the conservator of, and the guardian of justice.t The 
laws of men contain not all the precepts of virtue, but only such as 
are accommodated to their customs, and are useful to preserve the 
ligaments of their government. The design of them is not so much 
to render the subjects good men, as good citizens: they order the 
practice of those virtues that may strengthen civil society, and dis- 
countenance those vices only which weaken the sinews of it: but 
God, being the guardian of universal righteousness, doth not only 
enact the observance of all righteousness, but the observance of it 
as righteousness. He commands that which is just in itself, enjoins 
virtues as virtues, and prohibits vices as vices: as they are profitable 
or injurious to ourselves, as well as to others. Men command tem- 
perance and justice ; not as virtues in themselves, but as they pre- 


* Ames de Conse. lib. v. cap. 1. quest. 7. 
VOL. 11.—9 


130 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


vent disorder and confusion in a commonwealth ; and forbid adultery 
and theft, not.as vices in themselves, but as they are intrenchments 
upon property; not as hurtful to the person that commits them, but 
as hurtful to the person against whose right they are comunitted. 
Upon this account, perhaps, Paul applauds the holiness of the law 
of God in regard of its own nature, as considered in itself, more 
than he doth the justice of it in regard of man, and the goodness 
and conveniency of it to the world (Rom. vii. 12); the law is holy 
twice, and just and good but once. 

(3.) In the spiritual extent of it, The most righteous powers of 
the world do not so much regard in their laws what the inward af- 
fections of their subjects are: the external acts are only the objects 
of their decrees, either to. encourage them if they be useful, or dis- 
courage them if they be hurtful to the community. And, indeed, 
they can do no other, for they have no power proportioned to in- 
ward affections, since the inward disposition falls not under their 
censure; and it would be foolish for any legislative power to make 
such laws, which it is impossible for it to put in execution. They 
can prohibit the outward acts of theft and murder, but. they cannot 
command the love of God, the hatred of sin, the contempt of the 
world; they cannot prohibit unclean thoughts, and the atheism of 
the heart. But the law of God surmounts in righteousness all the 
laws of the best-regulated commonwealths in the world : it restrains 
the licentious heart, as well as the violent hand; it damps the very 
first bubblings of corrupt nature, orders a purity in the spring, com- 
mands a clean fountain, clean streams, clean vessels. It would frame 
the heart to an inward, as well as the life to an outward righteous- 
ness, and make the inside purer than the outside. It forbids the first 
belchings of a murderous or adulterous intention: it obligeth a man 
as a rational creature, and therefore exacts a conformity of every 
rational faculty, and of whatsoever is under the command of them, 
It commands the private closet to be free from the least cobweb, as 
well as the outward porch to be clean from mire and dirt. It frowns 
upon all stains and pollutions of the most retired thoughts: hence 
the apostle calls it a “spiritual law” (Rom. vii. 14), as not political, 
but extending its force further than the frontiers of the man; placing 
its ensigns in the metropolis of the heart and mind, and curbing 
with its sceptre the inward motions of the spirit, and commanding 
over the secrets of every man’s breast. 

(4). In regard of the perpetuity of it. The purity and perpetuity 
of it are linked together by the Psalmist (Ps. xix. 9): “ The fear of 
the Lord is clean, enduring for ever;” the fear of the Lord, that is, 
that law which commands the fear and worship of God, and is the 
rule of it. And, indeed, God values it at such a rate, that rather 
than part with a tittle, or let the honor of it lie in the dust, he 
would not only let “heaven and earth pass away,” but expose his 
Son to death for the reparation of the wrong it had sustained. So 
holy it is, that the holiness and righteousness of God cannot dis- 
pense with it, cannot abrogate it, without despoiling himself of his 
own being: it is a copy of the eternal law. Can he ever abrogate 
the command of love to himself, without showing some contempt 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 13¥ 


of his own excellency and very being? Before he can enjoin a 
creature not to love him, he must make himself unworthy of love, 
and worthy of hatred; this would be the highest unrighteousness, 
to order us to hate that which is only worthy of our highest affec- 
tions. So God cannot change the first command, and order us to 
worship many gods; this would be against the excellency and unity 
ofGod: fer God cannot constitute another God, or make anything 
worthy of an honor equal with himself Those things that are 
good, only because they are commanded, are alterable by God: 
those things that are intrinsically and essentially good, and_there- 
fore commanded, are unalterable as long as the holiness and right- 
eousness of God stand firm. The intrinsic goodness of the moral 
law, the concern God hath for it; the perpetuity of the precepts of 
the first table, and the care he hath had to imprint the precepts of 
the second upon the minds and consciences of men, as the Author 
of nature for the preservation of the world, manifests the holiness 
of the Lawmaker and Governor. 

9. His holiness appears in the ceremonial law: in the variety of 
sacrifices for sin, wherein he writ his detestation of unrighteousness 
in bloody characters. His holiness was more constantly expressed 
in the centinual sacrifices, than in those rarer sprinklings of judg- 
ments now and then upon the world; which often reached, not the 
worst, but the most moderate sinners, and were the occasions of 
the questioning of the righteousness of his providence both by 
Jews and Gentiles. In judgments his purity was only now anc 
then manifest: by his long patience, he might be imagined by some 
reconciled to their crimes, or not much concerned in them ; but by the 
morning and evenipg sacrifice he witnessed a perpetual and unin- 
terrupted abhorrence of whatsoever was evil. Besides those, the 
occasional washings and sprinklings upon ceremonial defilements, 
which polluted only the body, gave an evidence, that everything 
that had a resemblance to evil, was loathsome to him. Add, also, 
the prohibitions of eating such and such creatures that were filthy; 
as the swine that wallowed in the mire, a fit emblem for the pro- 
fane and brutish sinner; which had a moral signification, both of 
the loathsomeness of sin to God, and the aversion themselves ought 
to have to everything that was filthy. 

8. This holiness appears in the allurements annexed to. the law 
for keeping it, and the affrightments to restrain from the breaking 
of it. Both promises and threatenings have their fundamental root 
in the holiness of God, and are both branches of this peculiar perfec- 
tion. As they respect the nature of God, they are declarations of his 
hatred of sin, and his love of righteousness; the one belong to his 
threatenings, the other to his promises; both join together to repre- 
sent this divine perfection to the creature, and to excite to an imt- 
tation in the creature. In the one, God would render sin odious, 
because dangerous, and curb the practice of evil, which would. 
otherwise be licentious; in the other, he would commend righteous: 
ness, and excite a love of it, which would otherwise be cold. By, 
there God suits the two great affections of men, fear and hope; 

» Suarez. 


182 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


both the branches of self-love in man: the promises and threaten- 
ings are both the branches of holiness in God. The end of the 
promises is the same with the exhortation the apostle concludes from 
them (2 Cor. vu. 1); “(Having these promises, let us cleanse our- 
selves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in 
the fear of God.” As the end of precept is to direct, the end of 
threatenings is to deter from iniquity, so that the promises is to 
allure to obedience. Thus God breathes out his love to righteous- 
ness in every promise; his hatred of sin in every threatening. The 
rewards offered in the one, are the smiles of pleased holiness; and 
the curses thundered in the other, are the sparklings of enraged 
righteousness. 

4, His holiness appears in the judgment inflicted for the violation 
of this law. Divine holiness is the root of Divine justice, and Divine 
justice is the triumph of Divine holiness. Hence both are expressed 
in Scripture by one word of righteousness, which sometimes signi- 
fies the rectitude of the Divine nature, and sometimes the vindicative 
stroke of his arm (Ps. ci. 6); ‘The Lord executeth righteousness 
and judgment for all that are oppressed.” So (Dan. ix. 7) “ Righ- 
teousness (that is, justice) belongs to thee.” The vials of his wrath 
are filled from his implacable aversion to iniquity. All penal evils 
shower down upon the heads of wicked men, spread their root in, 
and branch out from, this perfection. All the dreadful storms and 
tempests in the world are blown up by it. Why doth he ‘rain 
snares, fire and brimstone, and a horrible tempest!” Because ‘“ the 
righteous Lord loveth righteousness” (Ps. xi. 6, 7). And, as was 
observed before, when he was going about the dreadfulest work that 
ever was in the world, the overturning the Jewish state, hardening 
the hearts of that unbelieving people, and cashiering a nation, once 
dear to him, from the honor of his protection; his holiness, as the 
spring of all this, is applauded by the seraphims (Isa. vi. 3, com- 
pared with ver. 9—11), &c. Impunity argues the approbation of a 
crime, and punishment the abhorrency of it. The greatness of the 
crime, and the righteousness of the Judge, are the first natural sen- 
timents that arise in the minds of men upon the appearance of Di- 
vine judgments in the world, by those that are near them ;* as, when 
men see gibbets erected, scaffolds prepared, instruments of death 
and torture provided, and grievous punishments inflicted, the first 
reflection in the spectator is the malignity of the crime, and the de- 
testation the governors are possessed with. 

(1). How severely hath he punished his most noble creatures for 
it! The once glorious angels, upon whom he had been at greater 
cost than upon any other creatures, and drawn more lively linea- 
ments of his own excellency, upon the transgression of his law, are 
thrown into the furnace of justice, without any mercy to pity them 
(Jude 6). And though there were but one sort of creatures upon 
the earth that bore his image, and were only fit to publish and keep 
up his honor below the heavens, yet, upon their apostasy, though 
upon a temptation from a subtle and insinuating spirit, the man, 
with all his posterity, is sentenced to misery in life, and death at 

x Amirant. Moral. Tom. V. p. 388. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 138 


last ; and the woman, with all her sex, have standing punishments 
inflicted on them, which, as they begun in their persons, were to 
reach as far as the last member of their successive generations. So 
holy is God, that he will not endure a spot in his choicest work. 
Men, indeed, when there is a crack in an excellent piece of work, or 
@ stain upon a rich garment, do not cast it away; they value it for 
the remaining excellency, more than hate it for the contracted spot; 
but God saw no excellency in his creature worthy regarding, after 
the image of that which he most esteemed in himself was defaced. 
(2). How detestable to him arethe very instruments of sin! Forthe 
il use the serpent, an irrational creature, was put to by the devil, as 
an instrument in the fall of man, the whole brood of those animals 
are cursed (Gen. ii. 14), “cursed above all cattle, and above every 
beast of the field.” Not only the devil’s head is threatened to be 
for ever bruised, and, as some think, rendered irrecoverable upon 
this further testimony of his malice in the seduction of man, who, 
perhaps, without this new act, might have been admitted into the 
arms of mercy, notwithstanding his first sin; “though the Scrip- 
ture gives us no account of this, only this is the only sentence we 
read of pronounced against the devil, which puts him into an irre- 
coverable state by a mortal bruising of his head.” But, I say, he 
is not only punished, but the organ, whereby he blew in his temp- 
tation, is put into a worse condition than it was before. Thus God 
hated the sponge, whereby the devil deformed his beautiful image: 
thus God, to manifest his detestation of sin, ordered the beast, . 
whereby any man was slain, to be slain as well as the malefactor 
(Lev. xx. 15), The gold and silver that had been abused to idolatry, 
and were the ornaments of images, though good in themselves, and 
incapable of a criminal nature, were not to be brought into their 
houses, but detested. and abhorred by them, because they were 
cursed, and an abomination to the Lord. See with what loathing 
expressions this law is enjoined to them (Deut. vii. 25, 26). So 
contrary is the holy nature of God to every sin, that it curseth 
everything that is instrumental in it. 
_ (8.) How detestable is everything to him that is in the sinner’s 
possession! The very earth, which God had made Adam the pro- 
prietor of, was cursed for his sake (Gen. iii. 17, 18). It lost its beauty, 
and lies languishing to this day ; and, notwithstanding the redemp- 
tion by Christ, hath not recovered its health, nor is it like to do, till 
the completing the fruits of it upon the children of God (Rom. viii. 
20-22). The whole lower creation was made subject to vanity, and 
put into pangs, upon the sin of man, by the righteousness of God 
detesting his offence. How often hath his implacable aversion from 
sin been shown, not only in his judgments upon the offender’s per- 
son, but by wrapping up, in the same judgment, those which stood 
im a near relation to them! Achan, with his children and cattle, 
are overwhelmed with stones, and burned together (Josh. vii. 24, 25). 
In the destruction of Sodom, not only the grown malefactors, but 
the young spawn, the infants, at present incapable of the same wick- 
edness, and their cattle, were burned up by the same fire from 
heaven ; and the place where their habitations stood, is, at this day, 


184 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


partly a heap of ashes, and partly an infectious lake, that chokes any fish 
that swims into it from Jordan, and stifles, as is related, by its vapor, 
any bird that attempts to fly over it. O, how detestable is sin to God, 
that causes him to turn a pleasant land, as the “ garden of the Lord” (ag 
it is styled Gen. xiii. 10), into a lake of sulphur; to make it, both in his 
word and works, as a lasting monument of his abhorence of evil! 
(4.) What design hath God in all these acts of severity and vin- 
dictive justice, but to set off the lustre of his holiness? He testifies 
himself concerned for those laws, which he hath set as hedges and 
limits to the lusts of men; and, therefore, when he breathes forth 
his fiery indignation against a people, he is said to get himself hon- 
or: as when he intended the Red Sea should swallow up the Kgyp- 
tian army (Exod. xiv. 17, 18), which Moses, in his triumphant song, 
‘echoes back again (Exod. xv. 1): “Thou hast triumphed glorious- 
ly;” gloriously in his holiness, which is the glory of his nature, as 
Moses himself interprets it in the text. When men will not own 
the holiness of God, in a way of duty, God will vindicate it in a way 
of justice and punishment. In the destruction of Aaron’s sons, that 
were will-worshippers, and would take strange fire, ‘‘ sanctified” and 
“ slorified” are coupled (Ley. x. 8): he glorified himself in that act, 
in vindicating his holiness before all the people, declaring that he 
will not endure sin and disobedience. He doth therefore, in this 
life, more severely punish the sins of his people, when they presume 
upon any act of disobedience, for a testimony that the nearness and 
dearness of any person to him shall not make him unconcerned in 
his holiness, or be a plea for impurity. The end of all his judg- 
ments is to witness to the world his abominating of sin. To punish 
and witness against men, are one and the same thing (Micah i. 5 
“The Lord shall witness against you ;” and it is the witness of God's 
holiness (Hos. v. 5): “And the pride of Israel doth testify to his 
face :” one renders it the excellency of Israel, and understands it of 
God: the word 783, which is here in our translation, “ pride,” is 
rendered “ excellency” (Amos viii. 7): “The Lord God hath sworn 
by his excellency ;” which is interpreted “ holiness” (Amos iv. 2): 
“The Lord God hath sworn by his holiness.” What is the issue or 
end of this swearing by “holiness,” and of his “ excellency” testity- 
ing against them? In all those places you will find them to be 
sweeping judgments: in one, Israel and Ephraim shall “ fall in their 
iniquity ;” in another, he will ‘‘take them away with hooks,” and 
“ their posterity with fish-hooks ;” and in another, he would. ‘ never 
forget any of their works.” He that punisheth wickedness in those 
he before used with the greatest tenderness, furnisheth the world 
with an undeniable evidence of the detestableness of it to him. Were 
not judgments sometimes poured out upon the world, it would be 
believed that God were rather an approver than an enemy to sin. 
To conclude, since God hath made a stricter law to guide men, an- 
nexed promises above the merit of obedience to allure them, and 
threatenings dreadful enough to affright men from disobedience, he 
cannot be the cause of sin, nor a lover of it. How can he be the 
author of that which he so severely forbids; or love that which he 
delights to punish; or be fondly indulgent to any evil, when he 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 135 


hates the ignorant instruments in the offences of his reasonable 
creatures ? 

Thirdly. The holiness of God appears in our restoration. It is in 
the glass of the gospel we behold the “glory of the Lord” (2 Cor. 
iii. 18); that is, the glory of the Lord, into whose image we are 
changed; but we are changed into nothing, as the image of God, 
but into holiness: we bore not upon us by creation, nor by regene- 
ration, the image of any other perfection: we cannot be changed 
into his omnipotence, omniscience, &c., but into the image of his 
righteousness. This is the pleasing and glorious sight the gospel 
mirror darts in our eyes. The whole scene of redemption is nothing 
else but a discovery of judgment and righteousness (Isa. 1. 27): “ Zion 
shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.” 

1. This holiness of God appears in the manner of our restoration, 
viz. by the death of Christ. Not all the vials of judgments, that have, 
or shall be poured out upon the wicked world, nor the flaming furnace 
of a sinner’s conscience, nor the irreversible sentence pronounced 
against the rebellious devils, nor the groans of the damned creatures, 
give such a demonstration of God’s hatred of sin, as the wrath of God 
let loose upon his Son. Never did Divine holiness appear more beau- 
tiful and lovely, than at the time our Saviour’s countenance was most 
marred in the midst of his dying groans. This himself acknowledgesin 
that prophetical psalm (xxii. 1, 2), when God had turned his smiling 
face from him, and thrust his sharp knife into his heart, which forced 
that terrible cry from him, “ My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
me?” He adores this perfection of holiness (ver. 3), ‘But thou art 
holy ;” thy holiness is the spring of all this sharp agony, and for this 
thou inhabitest, and shalt forever inhabit, the praises of all thy Israel. 
Holiness drew the veil between God’s countenance and our Saviour’s 
soul. Justice indeed gave the stroke, but holiness ordered it. In 
this his purity did sparkle, and his irreversible justice manifested 
that all those that commit sin are worthy of death; this was the 
perfect index of his “righteousness” (Rom. iii. 25), that is, of his 
holiness and truth ; then it was that God that is holy, was “ sanctified in 
righteousness” (Isa. v. 16). It appears the more, if you consider, 

(1.) The dignity of the Redeemer’s person. One that had been 
from eternity; had laid the foundations of the world; had been the 
object of the Divine delight: he that was God blessed forever, be- 
come a curse; he who was blessed by angels, and by whom God 
blessed the world, must be seized with horror; the Son of eternity 
taust bleed to death! When did ever sin appear so irreconcileable 
to God? Where did God ever break out so furiously in his detes- 
tation of iniquity ? The Father would have the most excellent per- 
son, one next in order to himself, and equal to him in all the glori- 
ous perfections of hisnature (Phil. ii. 6), die on a disgraceful cross, and 
be exposed to the flames of Divine wrath, rather than sin should live, 
and his holiness remain forever disparaged by the violations of his law. 

(2.) The near relation he stood in to the Father. He was his 
““own Son that he delivered up” (Rom. viii. 32); his essential image, 
as dearly beloved by him as himself; yet he would abate nothing 
of his hatred of those sins imputed to one so dear to him, and who 


186 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


mever had done anything contrary to his will. The strong cries 
uttered by him could not cause him to cut off the least fringe of this 
royal garment, nor part with a thread the robe of his -holiness was 
woven with. The torrent of wrath is opened upon him, and the 
Father’s heart beats not in the least notice of tenderness to sin,’ in the 
midst of his Son’s agonies. God seems to lay aside the bowels of a 
father, and put on the garb of an irreconcileable enemy,Y upon which 
account, probably, our Saviour in the midst of his passion gives him 
the title of God; not of Father, the title he usually before addressed 
to him with, (Matt. xxvii. 46), “ My God, my God ;” not, My Father, 
my Hather; ‘why hast thou forsaken me?” Heseems to hang upon 
the cross like a disinherited son, while he appeared in the garb and 
rank of a sinner. Then was his head loaded with curses, when he 
stood under that sentence of ‘‘ Cursed is every one that hangs upon 
a tree” (Gal. iii. 18), and looked as one forlorn and rejected by 
the Divine purity and tenderness. God dealt not with him as if he 
had been one in so neara relation to him. He left him not to the 
will only of theinstruments of his death ; he would have the chiefest 
blow himself of bruising of him (Isa. lili. 10): “It pleased the Lord 
to bruise him:” the Lord, because the power of creatures could not 
strike a blow strong enough to satisfy and secure the rights of infi- 
nite holiness. It was therefore a cup tempered and put into his 
hands by his Father; a cup given him to drink. In other judg- 
ments he lets out his wrath against his creatures; in this he lets out 
his wrath, as it were, against himself, against his Son, one as dear to 
him as himself. Asin his making creatures, his power over nothing 
to bring it into being appeared ; butin pardoning’sin he hath power 
over himself; so in punishing creatures, his holiness appears in his 
wrath against creatures, against sinners by inherency ; but by pun- 
ishing sin in his Son, his holiness sharpens his wrath against him, 
who was his equal, and only a reputed sinner ; as if his affection to 
his own holiness surmounted his affection to his Son: for he chose 
to suspend the breakings out of his affections to his Son, and see 
him plunged in a sharp and ignominious misery, without giving 
him any visible token of his love, rather than see his holiness lie 
groaning under the injuries of a transgressing world. 

(3.) The value he puts upon his holiness appears further, in the 
advancement of this redeeming person, after hisdeath. Our Saviour 
was advanced, not barely for his dying, but for the respect he had 
in his death to this attribute of God (Heb. i. 9): ‘Thou hast loved 
righteousness, and hated iniquity: therefore God, even thy God, 
hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness,” &. By righteousness 
is meant this perfection, because of the opposition of it to iniquity. 
Some think ‘“ therefore” to be the final cause; as if this were the sense, 
“Thou art anointed with the oil of gladness, that thou mightest love 
righteousness and hate iniquity.” But the Holy Ghost seeming to 
speak in this chapter not only of the Godhead of Christ but of his 
exaltation; the doctrine whereof he had begun in ver. 3, and pro- 
secutes in the following verses, I would rather understand “ there- 
fore,” for “ this cause, or reason, hath God anointed thee ;” not “ to 

y Lingend. Tom. III. pp. 699, 700. 


OM THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 187 


this end.” Christ indeed had an unction of grace, whereby he was 
fitted for his mediatory work; he had also an unction of glory, 
whereby he was rewarded for it. In the first regard, it was a 
qualifying him for his office ; in the second regard, it was a solemn 
inaugurating him in his royal authority. And the reason of his 
being settled upon a “throne for ever -and ever,” is, “because he 
loved righteousness.” He suffered himself to be pierced to death, 
that sin, the enemy of God’s purity, might be destroyed, and the 
honor of the law, the image of God’s holiness, might be repaired 
and fulfilled in the fallen creature. He restored the credit of Divine 
holiness in the world, in manifesting, by his death, God an irrecon- 
cileable enemy to all sin; in abolishing the empire of sin, so hateful 
to God, and restoring the rectitude of nature, and new framing the 
image of God in his chosen ones. And God so valued this vindica- 
tion of his holiness, that he confers upon him, in his human nature, 
an eternal royalty and empire over angels and men. Holiness was 
the great attribute respected by Christ in his dying, and manifested 
in his death; and for his love to this, God would bestow an honor 
upon his,person, in that nature wherein he did vindicate the honor 
of so dear a perfection. In the death of Christ, he showed his 
resolution to preserve its rights; in the exaltation of Christ, he 
evinced his mighty pleasure for the vindication of it; in both, the 
infinite value he had for it, as dear to him as his life and glory. 
(4.) It may be further considered, that in this way of redemption, 
his holiness in the hatred of sin seems to be valued above any other 
attribute. He proclaims the value of it above the person of his 
Son; since the Divine nature of the Redeemer is disguised, obscured, 
and vailed, in order to the restoring the honor of it. And Christ 
seems to value it above his own person, since he submitted himself 
to the reproaches of men, to clear this perfection of the Divine 
nature, and make it illustrious in the eyes of the world. You heard 
before, at the beginning of the handling this argument, it was the 
beauty of the Deity, the lustre of his nature, the link of all his 
attributes, his very life; he values it equal with himself, since he 
swears by it, as well as by his life; and none of his attributes would 
have a due decorum without it; it is the glory of power, mercy, 
justice, and wisdom, that they are all holy; so that though God 
had an infinite tenderness and compassion to the fallen creature, yet 
it should not extend itself in his relief to the prejudice of the rights 
of his purity: he would have this triumph in the tenderness of his 
mercy, as well as the severities of his justice. His mercy had not 
appeared in its true colors, nor attained a regular end, without 
vengeance on sin. It would have been a compassion that would, 
in sparing the sinner, have encouraged the sin, and affronted holi- 
ness in the issues of it: had he dispersed his compassions about the 
world, without the regard to his hatred of sin, his mercy had been 
too cheap, and his holiness had been contemned; his mercy would 
not have triumphed in his own nature, whilst his holiness had 
suffered; he had exercised a mercy with the impairing his own 
glory; but now, in this way of redemption, the rights of both are 
secured, both have their due lustre: the odiousness of sin is equally 


138 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


discovered with the greatest of his compassions; an infinite abhor- 
rence of sin, and an infinite love to the world, march hand in hand 
together. Never was so much of the irreconcileableness of sin to 
him set forth, as in the moment he was opening his bowels in the 
reconciliation of the sinner. Sin is made the chiefest mark of his 
displeasure, while the poor creature is made the highest object of 
Divine pity. There could have been no motion of mercy, with the 
least injury to purity and holiness. In this way mercy and truth, 
mercy to the misery of the creature, and truth to the purity of the 
law, “have met together ;” the righteousness of God, and the peace 
of the sinner, “ have kissed each other” (Ps. lxxxv. 10). 

2. ‘The holiness of God in his hatred of sin appears in our justifi- 
cation, and the conditions he requires of all that would enjoy the 
benefit of redemption. His wisdom hath so tempered all the condi- 
tions of it, that the honor of his holiness is as much preserved, as 
the sweetness of his mercy is experimented by us; all the conditions 
are records of his exact purity, as well as of his condescending grace. 
Our justification is not by the imperfect works of creatures, but by 
an exact and infinite righteousness, as great as that of the Deity 
which had been offended : it being the righteousness of a Divine per- 
son, upon which account it is called the righteousness of God; not 
only in regard of God’s appointing it, and God’s accepting it, but as 
it is a righteousness of that person that was God, and is God. Faith 
is the condition God requires to justification ; but not a dead, but an 
active faith, such a ‘faith as purifies the heart” (James ii. 20; Acts 
xv. 9). He calls for repentance, which is a moral retracting our of- 
fences, and an approbation of contemned righteousness und a vio- 
lated law ; an endeavor to gain what is lost, and to pluck out the heart 
of that sin we have committed. He requires mortification, which is 
called crucifying ; whereby a man would strike as full and deadly a 
blow at his lusts, as was struck at Christ upon the cross, and make 
them as certainly die, as the Redeemer did. Our own righteousness 
must be condemned by us, as impure and imperfect: we must dis- 
own everything that is our own, as to righteousness, in reverence to 
the holiness of God, and the valuation of the righteousness of Christ. 
He hath resolved not to bestow the inheritance of glory without the 
root of grace. None are partakers of the Divine blessedness that 
are not partakers of the Divine nature: there must be a renewing 
of his image before there be a vision of his face (Heb. xii. 14). He 
will not have men brought only into a relative state of happiness by 
justification, without a real state of grace by sanctification; and so 
resolved he is in it, that there is no admittance into heaven of a start- 
ing, but a persevering holiness (Rom. ii. 7), “a patient continuance 
in well-doing:” patient, under the sharpness of affliction, and contin- 
uing, under the pleasures of prosperity. Hence it is that the gospel, 
the restoring doctrine, hath not only the motives of rewards to allure 
to good, and the danger of punishments to scare us from evil, as the 
law had ; but they are set forth in a higher strain, in a way of stronger 
engagement; the rewards are heavenly, and the punishments eter- 
nal: and more powerful motives besides, from the choicer expres- 
sions of God’s love in the death of his Son. The whole design of 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 139 


it is to reinstate us in a resemblance to this Divine perfection ; where- 
by he shows what an affection he hath to this excellency of his 
nature, and what a detestation he hath of evil, which is contrary 
to it. 

8. It appears in the actual regeneration of the redeemed souls, 
and a carrying it on to a full perfection. As election is the effect 
of God’s sovereignty, our pardon the fruit of his mercy, our knowl- 
edge a stream from his wisdom, our strength an impression of his 
power; so our purity is a beam from hisholiness. ‘he whole work 
of sanctification, and the preservation of it, our Saviour begs for his 
disciples of his Father, under this title (John xvi. 11, 17): “ Holy 
Father, keep them through thy own name,” and “sanctify them 
through thy truth ;” as the proper source whence holiness was to 
flow to the creature: as the sun is the proper fountain whence light 
is derived, both to the stars above, and the bodies here below. 
Whence He is not only called Holy, but the Holy One of Israel 
(Isa. xliii. 15), “I am the Lord your Holy One, the Creator of Is- 
rael:” displaying his holiness in them, by a new creation of them as 
his Israel. As the rectitude of the creature at the first creation was 
the effect of his holiness, so the purity of the creature, by a new 
creation, is a draught of the same pertection. He is called the Holy 
One of Israel more in Isaiah, that evangelical prophet, in erecting 
Zion, and forming a people for himself, than in the whole Scripture 
besides. As he sent Jesus Christ to satisfy his justice for the expia- 
tion of the guilt of sin, so he sends the Holy Ghost for the cleans- 
ing of the filth of sin, and overmastering the power of it: Himself 
is the fountain, the Son is the pattern, and the Holy Ghost the im- 
mediate imprinter of this stamp of holiness upon the creature. God 
hath such a value for this attribute, that he designs the glory of this 
in the renewing the creature, more than the happiness of the crea- 
ture; though the one doth necessarily follow upon the other, yet 
the one is the principal design, and the other the consequent of the 
former: whence our salvation is more frequently set forth, in Scrip- 
ture, by a redemption from sin, and sanctification of the soul, than 
by a possession of heaven.z Indeed, as God could not create a ra- 
tional creature, without interesting this attribute in a special manner, 
so he cannot restore the fallen creature without it. As in creating a 
rational creature, there must be holiness to adorn it, as well as wis- 
dom to form the design, and power to effect it; so in the restoration 
of the creature, as he could not make a reasonable creature unholy, 
so he cannot restore a fallen creature, and put him in a meet posture 
to take pleasure in him, without communicating to him a resem- 
blance of himself. As God cannot be blessed in himself without 
this perfection of purity, so neither can a creature be blessed without 
it. As God would be unlovely to himself without this attribute, so 
would the creature be unlovely to God, without a stamp and mark 
of it upon his nature. So much is this perfection one with God, 
valued by him, and interested in all his works and ways! 

III. The third thing I am to do, is to lay down some proposition 
in the defence of God's holiness in all his acts, about, or concerning 

z Tit. ii, 11—14, and many other places. 


140 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


sin. It was a prudent and pious advice of Camero, not to be too 
busy and rash in inquiries and conclusions about the reason of God’s 
providence in the matter of sin. The Scripture hath put a bar in 
the way of such curiosity, by telling us, that the ways of God’s wis- 
dom and rivhteousness in his judgments are “unsearchable” (Rom. 
x1. 83): much more the ways of God’s holiness, as he stands in re- 
lation to sin, as a Governor of the world; we cannot consider those | 
things without danger of slipping: our eyes are too weak to look 
upon the sun without being dazzled: too much curiosity met witha 
just check in our first parent. To be desirous to know the reason 
of all God’s proceedings in the matter of sin, is to second the am- 
bition of Adam, to be as wise as God, and know the reason of his 
actings equally with himself. It is more easy, as the same author 
saith, to give an account of God’s providence since the revolt of 
man, and the poison that hath universally seized upon human na- 
ture, than to make guesses at the manner of the fall of the first man. 
The Scripture hath given us but a short account of the manner of 
it, to discourage too curious inquiries into it. It is certain that God 
made man upright; and when man sinned in paradise, God was ac- 
tive in sustaining the substantial nature and act of the sinner while 
he was sinning, though not in supporting the sinfulness of the act: 
he was permissive in suffering it: he was negative in witholding 
that grace which might certainly have prevented his crime, and con- 
sequently his ruin; though he withheld nothing that was sufficient 
for his resistance of that temptation wherewith he was assaulted. 
And since the fall of man, God, as a wise governor, is directive of 
the events of the transgression, and draws the choicest good out of © 
the blackest evil, and limits the sins of men, that they creep not so 
far as the evil nature of men would urge them to; and as a right- 
eous Judge, he takes away the talent from idle servants, and the 
light from wickéd ones, whereby they stumble and fall into crimes, 
by the inclinations and proneness of their own corrupt natures, leaves 
them to the bias of their own vicious habits, denies that grace which 
they have forfeited, and have no right to challenge, and turns their sin- 
ful actions into punishments, both to the committers of them and others. 

Prop. I. God’s holiness is not chargeable with any blemish for his 
ereating man in a mutable state. It is true, angels and men were 
created with a changeable nature; as though there was a rich and 
glorious stamp upon them by the hand of God, yet their natures 
were not incapable of a base and vile stamp from some other prin- 
ciple: as the silver which bears upon it the image of a great prince, 
is capable of being melted down, and imprinted with no better an 
image than that of some vile and monstrous beast, Though God 
made man upright, yet he was capable of seeking “many inven- 
tions” (Hccl. vii. 29); yet the hand of God was not defiled by form- 
ing man with such a nature. It was suitable to the wisdom of God 
to give the rational creature, whom he had furnished with a power 
of acting righteously, the liberty of choice, and not fix him in an 
unchangeable state without a trial of him in his natural; that if he 
did obey, his obedience might be the more valuable; and if he did 
freely offend, his offence might be more inexcusable. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 14} 


1. No creature can be capable of immutability by nature. Mu- 
tability is so essential to a creature, that.a creature cannot be sup- 
posed without it; you must suppose it a Creator, not a creature, if 
you allow it to be of an immutable nature. Immutability is the pro- 
perty of the Supreme Being. God “only hath immortality” (1 Tim. 
vi. 16); immortality, as opposed not only to a natural, but to a sin- 
ful death ; the word only appropriates every sort of immortality to 
God, and excludes every creature, whether angel or man, from a 
partnership with God in this by nature. Every creature, therefore, 
is capable of a death in sin. ‘‘ None is good but God,” and none is 
naturally free from change but God, which excludes every creature 
from the same prerogative; and certainly, if one angel sinned, all 
might have sinned, because there was the same root of mutability in 
one as well as another. It is as possible for a creature to bea 
Creator, as for a creature to have naturally an incommunicable pro- 
perty of the Creator. All things, whether angels or men, are made 
of nothing, and therefore, capable of defection ;2 because a creature 
being made of nothing, cannot be good, per essentiam, or essentially 
good, but by participation from another. Again, every rational 
creature, being made of nothing, hath a superior which created him 
and governs him, and is capable of a precept; and, consequently, 
capable of disobedience as well as obedience to the precept, to 
transgress it, as well as obey it. God cannot sin, because he can 
have no superior to impose a precept on him. A rational creature, 
with a liberty of will and power of choice, cannot be made by na- 
ture of such a mould and temper, but he must be as well capable of 
choosing wrong, as of choosing right; and, therefore, the standing 
angels, and glorified saints, though they are immutable, it is not by 
nature that they are so, but by grace, and the good pleasure of God; 
for though they are in heaven, they have still in their nature a re- 
mote power of sinning, but it shall never be brought into act, be- 
cause God will always incline their wills to love him, and never 
concur with their wills to any evil act. Since, therefore, mutability 
Is essential to a creature as a creature, this changeableness cannot 
properly be charged upon God as the author of it; for it was not 
the term of God’s creating act, but did necessarily result from the 
nature of the creature, as unchangeableness doth result from the es- 
sence of God. ‘The brittleness of a glass is no blame to the art of 
him that blew up the glass into such a fashion; that imperfection 
of brittleness is not from the workman, but the matter; so, though 
unchangeableness be an imperfection, yet it is so necessary a one, 
that no creature can be naturally without it; besides, though angels 
and men were mutable by creation, and capable to exercise their 
wills, yet they were not necessitated to evil, and this mutability did 
not infer a necessity that they should fall, because some angels, 
which had the same root of changeableness in their natures with 
those that fell, did not fall, which they would have done, if 
capableness of changing, and necessity of changing, were one and 
the same thing. 

2. Though God made the creature mutable, yet he made him not 

* Suarez, Vol. IT. p. 548. 


142 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


evil. There could be nothing of evil in him that God created after 
his own image, and pronounced “good” (Gen. i. 27, 81). Man had. 
an ability to stand, as well as a capacity to fall: he was created with 
a principal of acting freely, whereby he was capable of loving God 
as his chief good, and moving to him as his last end; there was a 
beam of light in man’s understanding to know the rule he was to 
conform to, a harmony between his reason and his affections, an 
original righteousness: so that it seemed more easy for him to de- 
termine his will to continue in obedience to the precept, than to 
swerve from it; to adhere to God as his chief good, than to lis- 
ten to the charms of Satan. God created him with those advan- 
tages, that he might with more facility have kept his eyes fixed 
upon the Divine beauty, than turn his back upon it, and with 
greater ease have kept the precept God gave him, than have broken 
it. The very first thought darted, or impression made, by God, upon 
the angelical or human nature, was the knowledge of himself as 
their Author, and could be no more than such whereby both angels 
and men might be excited to a love of that adorable Being, that had 
framed them so gloriously out of nothing; and if they turned their 
wills and affections to another object it was not by the direction 
of God, but contrary to the impression God had made upon them, 
or the first thought he flashed into them. They turned themselves 
to the admiring their own excellency, or affecting an advantage dis- 
tinct from that which they were to look for only from God (1 Tim. 
iii. 6). Pride was the cause of the condemnation of the devil. 
Though the wills of angels and men were created mutable, and so 
were imperfect, yet they were not created evil. Though they might 
sin, yet they might not sin, and, therefore, were not evil in their own 
nature. What reflection, then, could this mutability of their nature 
be upon God? So far is it from any, that he is fully cleared, by 
storing up in the nature of man sufficient provision against his de- 
parture from him. God was so far from creating him evil, that he 
fortified him with a knowledge in his understanding, and a strength 
in his nature to withstand any invasion. The knowledge was ex- 
ercised by Eve, in the very moment of the serpent’s assaulting her 
(Gen. il. 3); Eve said to the serpent, “God hath said, ye shall not 
eat of it:” and had her thoughts been intent upon this, ‘‘ God hath 
said,” and not diverted to the motions of the sensitive appetite and 
liquorish palate, it had been sufficient to put by all the passes the 
devil did, or could have made at her. So that you see, though God 
made the creature mutable, yet he made him not evil, This clears 
the holiness of God. 

3. Therefore it follows, That though God created man changeable, 
yet he was not the cause of his change by his fall, Though man 
was created defectible, yet he was not determined by God influencing 
his will by any positive act to that change and apostasy. God placed 
him in a free posture, set life and happiness before him on the one 
hand, misery and death on the other; as he did not draw him into 
the arms of perpetual blessedness, so he did not drive him into the 
culf of his misery.» He did not incline him to evil. It was repugnant 

» Amyr. Moral. Tom. I. pp. 615, 616. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 143 


to the goodness of God to corrupt the righteousness of those faculties 
he had so lately beautified him with. It was not likely he should 
deface the beauty of that work he had composed with so much wis- 
dom and skill. Would he, by any act of his own, make that bad, 
which, but. a little before, he had acquiesced in as good? Angels 
and men were left to their liberty and conduct of their natural facul- 
ties; and if God inspired them with any motions, they could not but 
be motions to good, and suited to that righteous nature he had endued 
them with. But itis most probable that God did not, in a supernatural 
way, act inwardly upon the mind of man, but left him wholly to that 
power, which he had, in creation, furnished him with. The Scrip- 
ture frees God fully from any blame in this, and lays it wholly upon 
Satan, as the tempter, and upon man, as the determiner of his own 
will (Gen. iii. 6); Eve “took of the fruit, and did eat;” and Adam 
took from her of the fruit, “and did eat.” And Solomon (Kccles. 
vii. 29) distinguisheth God’s work in the creation of man “upright,” 
from man’s work in seeking out those ruining inventions. God 
created man in a righteous state, and man cast himself ito a forlorn 
state. As he was a mutable creature, he was from God; as he was 
a changed and corrupted creature, it was from the devil seducing, 
and his own pliableness in admitting. As silver, and gold, and other 
metals, were created by God in such a form and figure, yet capable 
of receiving other forms by the industrious art of man; when the 
image of a man is put upon a piece of metal, God is not said to create 
that image, though he created the substance with such a property, 
that it was capable of receiving it; this capacity is from the nature 
of the metal by God’s creation of it, but the carving the figure of this 
or that man is not the act of God, but the act of man. As images, 
in Scripture, are called the work of men’s hands, in regard of the 
imagery, though the matter, wood or stone, upon which the image 
was carved, was a work of God’s creative power. When an artificer 
frames an excellent instrument, and a musician exactly tunes it, and 
it comes out of their hands without a blemish, but capable to be un- 
tuned by some rude hand, or receive a crack by a sudden fall, if it 
meet with a disaster, is either the workman or musician to be blamed? 
The ruin of a house, caused by the wastefulness or carelessness of the 
tenant, is not to be imputed to the workman that built it strong, and 
left it in a good posture. | 

Prop. 11. God's holiness is not blemished by enjoining man a law, 
which he knew he would not observe. 

1. The law was not above his strength. Had the law been impos- 
sible to be observed, no crime could have been imputed to the sub- 
ject, the fault had lain wholly upon the Governor; the non-observ- 
ance of it had been from a want of strength, and not from a want of 
will. Had God commanded Adam to fly up to the sun, when he 
had not given him wings, Adam might have a will to obey it, but 
his power would be too short to perform it.. But the law set him for 
a rule, had nothing of impossibility in it; it was easy to be observed; 
the command was rather below, than above his strength; and the 
sanction of it was more apt to restrain and scare him from the breach 
of it, than encourage any daring attempts against it; he had as much 


144 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


power, or rather more, to conform to it, than to warp from it; and 
greater arguments and interest to be observant of it, than to violate 
it; his all was secured by the one, and his ruin ascertained by the 
other. The commands of God are not grievous (1 John v. 3); from 
the first to the last command, there is nothing impossible, nothing 
hard to the original and created nature of man, which were all sum- 
med up in a love to God, which was the pleasure and delight of man, 
as well as his duty, if he had not, by inconsiderateness, neglected the 
dictates and resolves of his own understanding. The law was suited 
to the strength of man, and fitted for the improvement and perfection 
of his nature; in which respect, the apostle calls it “ good,” as it refers 
to man, as well as “holy,” as it refers to God (Rom. vii. 12). Now, 
since God created man a creature capable to be governed by a law, 
and as a rational creature endued with understanding and will, not 
to be governed, according to his nature, without a law; was it con- 
gruous to the wisdom of God to respect only the future state of man, 
which, from the depth of his infinite knowledge, he did infallibly 
foresee would be miserable, by the wilful defection of man from the 
rule? Had it been agreeable to the wisdom of God, to respect only 
this future state, and not the present state of the creature; and there- 
fore leave him lawless, because he knew he would violate the law? 
Should God forbear to act like a wise governor, because he saw that 
man would cease to act like an obedient subject? Shall a righteous 
magistrate forbear to make just and good laws, because he foresees, 
either from the dispositions of his subjects, their ill-humor, or some 
circumstances which will intervene, that multitudes of them will 
incline to break those laws, and fall under the penalty of them? No 
blame can be upon that magistrate who minds the rule of righteous- 
ness, and the necessary duty of his government, since he is not the 
cause of those turbulent. affections of men, which he wisely foresees 
will rise up against his just edicts. 

2. Though the law now be above the strength of man, yet is not 
the holiness of God blemished by keeping it up. It is true, God hath 
been graciously pleased to mitigate the severity and rigor of the law, 
by the entrance of the gospel; yet where men refuse the terms of the 
gospel, they continue themselves under the condemnation of the law, 
and are justly guilty of the breach of it, though they have no strength 
to observe it. The law, as I said before, was not above man’s strength, 
when he was possessed of original righteousness, though it be above 
man’s strength, since he was stripped of original righteousness. The 
command was dated before man had contracted his impotency, when: 
he had a power to keep it as well as to break it. Had it been enjoined 
to man only after the fall, and not before, he might have had a better 
pretence to excuse himself, because of the impossibility of it; yet he 
would not have had sufficient excuse, since the impossibility did not 
result from the nature of the law, but from the corrupted nature of 
the creature. It was “weak through the flesh” (Rom. viii. 3), but it 
was promulged when man had a strength proportioned to the com- 
mands of it. And now, since man hath unhappily made himself 
incapable of obeying it, must God’s holiness in his law be blemished 
for enjoining it? Must he abrogate those commands, and prohibit 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 145 


what before he enjoined, for the satisfaction of the corrupted creature? 
Would not this be his ‘ceasing to be holy,” that his creature might 
be unblameably unrighteous? Must God strip himself of his holi- 
ness, because man will not discharge his iniquity? He cannot be 
the cause of sin, by keeping up the law, who would be the cause of 
all the unrighteousness of men, by removing the authority of it. 
Some things in the law that are intrinsically good in their own 
nature, are indispensable, and it is repugnant to the nature of God 
not to command them. If he were not the guardian of his indispen- 
sable law, he would be the cause and countenancer of the creatures’ 
iniquity. So little reason have men to charge God with being the 
cause of their sin, by not repealing his law to gratify their impotence, 
that he would be unholy if he did. God must not lose his purity, 
because man hath lost his, and cast away the right of his sovereignty, 
because man hath cast away his power of obedience. 

8. God’s foreknowledge that his law would not be observed, lays 
no blame upon him. Though the foreknowledge of God be infallible, 
yet it doth not necessitate the creature in acting. It was certain 
from eternity, that Adam would fall, that men would do such and 
such actions, that Judas would betray our Saviour; God foreknew 
all those things from eternity; but, it is as certain that this fore- 
knowledge did not necessitate the will of Adam, or any other branch 
of his posterity, in the doing those actions that were so foreseen by 
God; they voluntarily run into such courses, not by any impulsion. 
God’s knowledge was not suspended between certainty and uncer- 
tainty; he certainly foreknew that his law would be broken by 
Adam; he foreknew it in his own decree of not hindering him, by 
giving Adam the efficacious grace which would infallibly have pre- 
vented it; yet Adam did freely break this law, and never imagined 
that the foreknowledge of God did necessitate him to it; he could 
find no cause of his own sin, but the liberty of his own will; he 
charges the occasion of his sin upon the woman, and consequently 
upon God in giving the woman to him (Gen. ii. 12). He could not 
be so ignorant of the nature of God, as to imagine him without a 
foresight of future things: since his knowledge of what was to be 
known of God by creation, was greater than any man’s since, in all 
probability. But, however, if he were not acquainted with the no- 
tion of God’s foreknowledge, he could not be ignorant of his own act; 
there could not have been any necessity upon him, any kind of con- 
straint of him in his action, that could have been unknown to him | 
and he would not have omitted a plea of so strong a nature, when he 
was upon his trial for life or death; especially when he urgeth so 
weak an argument, to impute his crime to God, as the gift of the 
woman; as if that which was designed him for a help, were intend- 
ed for his ruin. If God’s prescience takes away the liberty of the 
creature, there is no such thing as a free action in the world (for there 
is nothing done but is foreknown by God, else we render God of a 
limited understanding), nor ever was, no, not by God himself, ad ex- 
iva; for whatsoever he hath done in creation, whatsoever he hath 
done since the creation, was foreknown by him: he resolved to do 
it, and, therefore, foreknew that he would do it. Did God do it, 


Vou. Tt.) 


146 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


therefore, necessarily, as necessity is opposed to liberty ? As he 
freely decrees what he will do, so he effects what he freely decreed. 
Foreknowledge is so far from intrenching upon the liberty of the will, 
that predetermination, which in the notion of it speaks something 
more, doth not dissolve it; God did not only foreknow, but deter- 
mine the suffering of Christ (Acts iv. 27, 28). It was necessary, 
therefore, that Christ should suffer, that God might not be mistaken 
in his foreknowledge, or come short of his determinate decree; but 
did this take away the liberty of Christ in suffering ? (Hiph. v. 2): 
“Who offered himself up to God;” that is, by a voluntary act, as 
well as designed to do it by a determinate counsel. Jt did infallibly 
secure the event, but did not annihilate the liberty of the action, 
either in Christ’s willingness to suffer, or the crime of the Jews that 
made him suffer, God’s prescience is God’s provision of things 
arising from their proper causes; as a gardener foresees in his plants 
the leaves and the flowers that will arise from them in the spring, 
because he knows the strength and nature of their several roots 
which lie under ground; but his foresight of these things is not the 
cause of the rise and appearance of those flowers. If any of us see a 
ship moving towards such a rock or quicksand, and know it to be 
governed by a negligent pilot, we shall certainly foresee that the 
ship will be torn in pieces by the rock, or swallowed up by the sands; 
but is this foresight of ours from the causes, any cause of the effect ; 
or can we from hence be said to be the authors of the miscarriage 
of the ship, and the loss of the passengers and goods? ‘The fall of 
Adam was foreseen by God to come to pass by the consent of his 
free will, in the choice of the proposed temptation. God foreknew 
‘Adam would sin, and if Adam would not have sinned, God would 
have foreknown that he would not sin. Adam might easily have 
detected the serpents fraud, and made a better election ; God foresaw 
that he would not do it; God’s foreknowledge did not make Adam 
guilty or innocent: whether God had foreknown it or no, he was 
guilty by a free choice, and a willing neglect of his own duty. 
‘Adain knew that God foreknew that he might eat of the fruit, and 
fall and die, because God had forbidden him; the foreknowledge 
that he would do it, was no more a cause of his action, than the 
foreknowledge that he might doit. Judas certainly knew that his 
Master foreknew that he would betray him, for Christ had acquaint- — 
ed him with it John xiii. 21, 26); yet he never charged this fore- 
knowledge of Christ with any guilt of his treachery. 

Prop. 111. The holiness of God is not blemished by decreeing the 
eternal rejection of some men. .Reprobation, in its first notion, is an 
act of preterition, or passing by. A man is not made wicked by the 
the act of God; but it supposeth him wicked; and so it is nothing 
else but God’s leaving a man in that guilt and filth wherein he be- 
holds him. In its second notion, it is an ordination, not to a crime, 
but to a punishment (Jude 4): “an ordainmg to condemnation.” 
And though it be an eternal act of God, yet, in order of nature, it 
follows upon the foresight of the transgression of man, and supposeth 
the crime. God considers Adam’s revolt, and views the whole mass 
of his corrupted posterity, and chooses some to reduce to himself by 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 147 


his grace, and leaves others to lie sinking in their ruins. Since all 
mankind fell by the fall of Adam, and have corruption conveyed to 
them successively by that root, whereof they are branches; all men 
might justly be left wallowing in that miserable condition to which they 
are reduced by the apostasy of their common head; and God might 
have passed by the whole race of man, as well as he did the fallen 
angels, without any hope of redemption. He was ne more bound to 
restore man, than to restore devils, nor bound to repair the nature 
of any one son of Adam; and had he dealt with men as he dealt 
with the devils, they had had, all of them, as little just ground to 
complain of God; for all men deserved to be left to themselves, for 
all were concluded under sin; but God calls out some to make 
monuments of his grace, which is an act of the sovereign mercy of 
that dominion, whereby “he hath mercy on whom he will have 
mercy” (Rom. ix. 18); others he passes by, and leaves them remain- 
ing in that corruption of nature wherein they were born. If men 
have a power to dispose of their own goods, without any unright- 
eousness, why should not God dispose of his own grace, and bestow 
it upon whom he pleases; since it is a debt to none, but a free gift 
to any that enjoy it? God is not the cause of sin in this, because 
his operation about this is negative; it is not an action, but a denial 
of action, and therefore cannot be the cause of the evil actions of 
men.¢ God acts nothing, but withholds his power; he doth not en- 
lighten their minds, nor incline their wills so powerfully, as to expei 
their darkness, and root out those evil habits which possess them by 
nature. God could, if he would, savingly enlighten the minds of ali 
men in the world, and quicken their hearts with a new life by an in- 
vincible grace; but in not doing it, there is no positive act of God, 
but a cessation of action. We may with as much reason say, that 
God is the cause of all the sinful actions that are committed by the 
corporation of devils, since their first rebellion, because he leaves 
them to themselves, and bestows not a new grace upon them,—as 
say, God is the cause of the sins of those that he overlooks and leaves 
in that state of guilt wherein he found them. God did not pass by 
any without the consideration of sin; so that this act of God is not 
repugnant to his holiness, but conformable to his justice. 

Prop. IV. The holiness of God is not blemished by his secret will 
to suffer sin to enter into the world. God never willed sin by his 
preceptive will. It was never founded upon, or produced by any 
word of his, as the creation was. He never said, Let there be sin 
under the heaven, as he said, “ Let there be water under the hea- 
ven.” Nor doth he will it by infusing any habit of it, or stirring up 
inclinations to it; no, “God tempts no man” (James i. 13). Nor 
doth he will it by his approving will; it is detestable to him, nor 
ever can he be otherwise; he cannot approve it either before com- 
mission or after. 

1. The will of God is in some sort concurrent with sin. He doth 
not properly will it, but he wills not to hinder it, to which, by his 
omnipotence, he could put a bar. If he did positively will it, it 
might be wrought by himself, and so could not be evil. If he did 

¢ Amyral. Defence de Calv. p. 145. 


148 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


in no sort will it, it would not be committed by his creature; sin 
entered into the world, either God willing the permission of it, or 
not willing the permission of it. The latter cannot be said; for then 
the creature is more powerful than God, and can do that which God 
will not permit. God can, if he be pleased, banish all sin in a mo- 
ment out of the world: he could have prevented the revolt of angels, 
and the fall of man; they did not sin whether he would or no: he 
might, by his grace, have stepped in the first moment, and made a 
special impression upon them of the happiness they already possessed, 
and the misery they would incur by any wicked attempt. He could 
as well have prevented the sin of the fallen angels, and confirmed 
them in grace, as of those that continued in their happy state: he 
might have appeared to man, informed him of the issue of his de- 
sign, and made secret impressions upon his heart, since he was ac- 
quainted with every avenue to his will. God could have kept all 
sin out of the world, as well as all creatures from breathing in it; he 
was as well able to bar sin forever out of the world, as to let crea- 
tures lie in the womb of nothing, wherein they were first wrapped. 
To say God doth will sin as he doth other things, is to deny his ho- 
liness; to say it entered without anything of his will, is to deny his 
omnipotence. If he did necessitate Adam to fall, what shall we 
think of his purity? If Adam did fall without any concern of God's 
will in it, what shall we say of his sovereignty? The one taints his 
holiness, and the other clips his power. Ifit came without anything 
of his will in it, and he did not foresee it, where is his omniscience? 
Tf it entered whether he would or no, where is his omnipotence 
(Rom. ix. 19)? “Who hath resisted his will?” ‘There cannot be a 
lustful act in Abimelech, if God will withhold his power (Gen. xx. 
6); “IT withheld thee:” nor a cursing word in Balaam’s mouth, un- 
less God give power to speak it (Numb. xxii, 38): ‘t Have [now any 
power at all to say anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, 
that shall I speak.” As no action could be sinful, if God had not 
forbidden it; so no sin could be committed, if God did not will to 
give way to it. 

2. God doth not will directly, and by an efficacious will. He doth 
not directly will it, because he hath prohibited it by his law, which 
is a discovery of his will: so that if he should directly will sin, and 
directly prohibit it, he would will good and evil in the same manner, 
and there would be contradictions in God’s will: to will sin abso- 
lutely, is to work it (Ps. exv. 8): “God hath done whatsoever he 
pleased.” God cannot absolutely will it, because he cannot work it. 
God wills good by a positive decree, because he hath decreed to effect 
it. He wills evil by a private decree, because he hath decreed not 
to give that grace which would certainly prevent it. God doth not 
will sin simply, for that were to approve it, but he wills it, in order to 
that good his wisdom will bring forth from it.e He wills not sin for 
itself, but for the event. To will sin as sin, or as purely evil, is not 
in the capacity of a creature, neither of man nor devil. The will of 
a rational creature cannot will anything but under the appearance 
of good, of some good in the sin itself, or some good in the issue of it. 

a Rispolis. e Bradward lib. i. cap. 34. “God wills it secundum quid.” 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 149 


Much more is this far from God, who, being infinitely good, cannot 
will evil as evil; and being infinitely knowing, cannot will that for 
od which is evil.f Infinite wisdom can be under no error or mis- 
take: to will sin as sin, would be an unanswerable blemish on God ; 
but to will to suffer it in order to good, is the glory of his wisdom ; 
it could never have peeped up its head, unless there had been some 
decree of God concerning it. And there had been no decree of God 
concerning it, had he not intended to bring good and glory out of it. 
If God did directly will the discovery of his grace and mercy to the 
world, he did in some sort will sin, as that without which there could 
not have been any appearance of mercy in the world; for an inno 
cent creature is not the object of mercy, but a miserable creature : 
and no rational creature but must be sinful before it be miserable. 

8. God wills the permission of sin. He doth not positively will 
sin, but he positively wills to permit it. And though he doth not 
approve of sin, yet he approves of that act of his will, whereby he 
permits it. For since that sin could not enter into the world without 
some concern of God’s will about it, that act of his will that gave 
way to it, could not be displeasing to him: God could never be dis- 

leased with his own act: ‘He is not as man, that he should repent” 
1 Sam. xv. 29). What God cannot repent of, he cannot but approve 
of: it is contrary to the blessedness of God to disapprove of, and 
be displeased with any act of his own will. If he hated any act 
of his own will, he would hate himself, he would be under a torture: 
every one that hates his own acts, is under some disturbance and 
torment for them. That which is permitted by him, is in itself, and 
in regard of the evil of it, hateful to him: but as the prospect of that 
good which he aims at in the permission of it is pleasing to him, so 
that act of his will, whereby he permits it, is ushered in by an ap- 
proving act of his understanding. Hither God approved of the per- 
mission, or not; if he did not approve his own act of permission, he 
could not have decreed an act of permission. It is inconceivable 
that God should decree such an act which he detested, and positively 
will that which he hated. Though God hated sin, as being againsi 
his holiness, yet he did not hate the permission of sin, as being sub- 
servient by the immensity of his wisdom to his own glory. He could 
never be displeased with that which was the result of his eternal 
counsel, as this decree of permitting sin was, as well as any other 
decree, resolved upon in his own breast. For as God acts nothing in 
time, but what he decreed from eternity, so he permits nothing im 
time but what he decreed from eternity to permit. ‘To speak prop- 
erly, therefore, God doth not will sin, but he wills the permission of 
it, and this will to permit is active and positive in God. 

4, This act of permission is not a mere and naked permission, but 
such an one as is attended with a certainty of the event. The decrees 
of God to make use of the sin of man for the glory of his grace n 


the mission and passion of his Son, hung upon this entrance of sin. 


Would it consist with the wisdom of God to decree such great and 

stupendous things, the event whereof should depend upon an un- 

éertain foundation which he might be mistaken in? God would have 
€ Aquin. cont. Gent. lib. i. cap. 95. 


150 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


sat in counsel from eternity to no purpose, if he had only permitted 
those things to be done, without any knowledge of the event of this 
permission. God would not have made such provision for redemp- 
tion to no purpose, or an uncertain purpose, which would have been, 
if man had not fallen; or if it had been an uncertainty with God 
whether he would fall or no. Though the will of God about sin was 
permissive, yet the will of God about that glory he would promote 
by the defect of the creature, was positive; and, therefore, he would 
not suffer so many positive acts of his will to hang upon an uncer- 
tain event; and, therefore, he did wisely and righteously order all 
things to the accomplishment of his great and gracious purposes. 

5. This act of permission doth not taint the holiness of God. 
That there is such an act as permission, is clear in Scripture (Acts 
xiv. 16): “ Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their 
own ways.” But that it doth not blemish the holiness of God, will 
appear, 

Ist. From the nature of this permission. , 

1. It is not a moral permission, a giving liberty of toleration by 
any law to commit sin with impunity ; when, what one law did for- 
bid, another law doth leave indifferent to be done or not, as a man 
sees good in himself. As when there is a law made among men, 
that no man shall go out of such a city or country without license ; 
to go out without license is a crime by the law ; but when that law is 
repealed by another, that gives liberty for men to go and come at 
their pleasure, it doth not make their going or coming necessary, but 
leaves those which were before bound, to do as they see good in 
themselves. Such a permission makes a fact lawful, though not nec- 
essary ; a man is not obliged to do it, but he is left to his own discre- 
tion to do as he pleases, without being chargeable with a crime for 
doing it. Such a permission there was granted by God to Adam of 
eating of the fruits of the garden, to choose any of them for food, 
except the tree of ‘“ knowledge of good and evil.” It was a precept 
to him, not to “eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good 
and evil;” but the other was a permission, whereby it was lawful for 
him to feed upon any other that was most agreeable to his appetite : 
but there is not such a permission in the ease of sin; this had been 
an indulgence of it, which had freed man from any crime, and, con- 
sequently, from punishment; because, by such a permission by law, 
he would have had authority to sin if he pleased. God did not re- 
move the law, which he had before placed as a bar against evil, nor 
ceased that moral impediment of his threatening: such a permission 
as this, to make sin lawful or indifferent, had been a blot upon God's 
holiness. 

2. But this permission of God, in the case of sin, is no more than 
the not hindering a sinful action, which he could have prevented. 
It is not so much an action of God, as a suspension of his influence, 
which might have hindered an evil act, and a forbearing to restrain 
the faculties of man from sin; it is, properly, the not exerting that 
efficacy which might change the counsels that are taken, and prevent 
the action intended; as when one man sees another ready to fall, 
and can preserve him from falling by reaching out his hand, he per- 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 151 


ynits him to fall, that is, he hinders him not from falling. So God 
describes his act about Abimelech (Gen. xx. 6); ‘‘I withheld thee 
from sinning against me, therefore suffered I thee not to touch her.” 
If Abimelech had sinned, he had sinned by God’s permission ; that 
is, by God’s not hindering, or not restraining him by making any im- 
pressions upon him. So that permission is only a withholding that 
help and grace, which, if bestowed, would have been an effectual 
remedy to prevent a crime; and it is rather a suspension, or cessa- 
tion, than properly a permission, and sin may be said to be commit- 
ted, not without God’s permission, rather than by his permission. 
Thus, in the fall ef man, God did not hold the reins strict upon 
Satan, to restrain him from laying the bait, nor restrain Adam from 
swallowing the bait: he kept to himself that efficacious grace which 
he might have darted out upon man to prevent his fall. God left 
Satan to his malice of tempting, and Adam to his hberty of resisting, 
and his own strength, to use that sufficient grace he had furnished 
him with, whereby he might have resisted and overcome the temp- 
tation. As he did not drive man to it, so he did not secretly restrain 
him from it. So, in the Jews crucifying our Saviour, God did not 
imprint upon their minds, by his Spirit, a consideration of the great- 
ness of the crime, and the horror of his justice due to it; and, bemg 
without those impediments, they run furiously, of their own accord, 
to the commission of that evil; as, when a man lets a wolf or dog 
out upon his prey, he takes off the chain which held them, and they 
presently act according to their natures.¢ In the fall of angels and 
men, God’s act was leaving them to their own strength; in sins after 
the fall, it is God’s giving them up to their own corruption ; the first 
is a pure suspension of grace; the other hath the nature of a punish- 
ment (Ps. Ixxxi. 12): “So I gave them up to their own hearts’ lusts.” 
The first object of this permissive will of God was to leave angels 
and men to their liberty, and the use of their free will, which was 
natural to them, not adding that supernatural grace which was 
necessary, not that they should not at all sin, but that they should 
infallibly not sin : they had a strength sufficient to avoid sin, but not 
sufficient infallibly to avoid sin; a grace sufficient to preserve them, 
but not sufficient to confirm them. 

3. Now this permission is not the cause of sin, nor doth blemish 
the holiness of God. It doth not intrench upon the freedom of men, 
but supposeth it, establisheth it, and leaves man to it. God acted 
nothing, but only ceased to act; and therefore could not be the efii- 
cient cause of man’s sin. As God is not the author of good, but by 
willing and effecting it, so he is not the author of evil, but by willing 
and effecting it, : but he doth not positively will evil, nor eftect it by 
any efficacy of his own. Permission is no action, nor the cause of 
that action which is permitted; but the will of that person who is 
permitted to do such an action is the cause.i God can no more be 
said to be the cause of sin, by suffering a creature to act as it will, 
than he can be said to be the cause of the not being of any creature, 
by denying it being, and letting it remain nothing; it 1s not from 
God that it is nothing, it is nothing in itself Though God be said 

* Lawson, p. 64. b Suarez, Vol. IV. p. 414. i Suarez, de Legib. p. 43. 


152 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


to be the cause of creation, yet he is never by any said to be the 
cause of that nothing which was before creation. This permission of 
God is not the cause of sin, but the cause of not hinderimg sin. Man 
and angels had a physical power of sinning from God, as they were 
created with freewill, and supported in their natural strength; but 
the moral power to sin was not from God; he counselled them not 
to it, laid no obligation upon them to use their natural power for 
such an end; he only left them to their freedom, and not hindered 
them in their acting what he was resolved to permit. 

2d. The holiness of God is not tainted by this, because he was 
under no obligation to hinder their commission of sin. Ceasing to 
act, whereby to prevent a crime or mischief, brings not a person 
permitting it under guilt, unless where he is under an obligation to 
prevent it; but God, in regard of his absolute dominion, cannot be 
charged with any such obligation. One man, that doth not hinder 
the murder of another, when it is in his power, is guilty of the mur- 
der in part; but, it is to be considered, that he is under a tie by 
nature, as being of the same kind, and being the other's brother, by 
a communion of blood, also under an obligation of the law of cha- 
tity, enacted by the common Sovereign of the world: but what tie 
was there upon God, since the infinite transcendancy of his nature, 
and his sovereign dominion, frees him from any such obligation 
(Job ix. 12)? “If he takes away, who shall say, What dost thou?” 
God might have prevented the fall of men and angels; he might 
have confirmed them all in astate of perpetual innocency; but where 
is the obligation? He had made the creature a debtor to himself, 
but he owed nothing to the creature. Before God can be charged 
with any guilt in this case, it must be proved, not only that he could, 
but that he was bound to hinder it. No person can be justly charged 
with another’s fault, merely for not preventing it, unless he be bound 
to prevent it; else, not only the first sin of angels and man would 
be imputed to God, as the Author, but all the sins of men. He 
could not be obliged by any law, because he had no superior to im- 
pose any law upon him; and it will be hard to prove that he was 
oblig :d, from his own nature, to prevent the entrance of sin, which 
he would use as an occasion to declare his own holiness, so trans- 
céendent a perfection of his nature, more than ever it could have been 
manifested by a total exclusion of it, wz.in the death of Christ. He 
is no more bound, in his own nature, to preserve, by supernatural 
grace, his creature from falling, after he had framed him with a suffi- 
cient strength to stand, than he was obliged, in his own nature, to 
bring his creature into being when it was nothing. He is not bound 
to create a rational creature, much less bound to create him with 
supernatural gifts; though, since God would make a rational crea 
ture, he could not but make him with a natural uprightness and 
rectitude. God did as much for angels and men as became a wise 
governor: he had published his law, backed it with severe penalties, 
and the creature wanted not a natural strength to observe and obey 
it. Had not man power to obey all the precepts of the law, as well 
as one? How was God bound to give him more grace, since what 
he had already wag enough to shield him, and keep up his resistance 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 153 


against all the power of hell? It had been enough to have pointed 
his will against the temptation, and he had kept off the force of it. 
Was there any promise past to Adam of any further grace which he 
could plead as a tie upon God? No such voluntary limit upon 
God’s supreme dominion appears upon record. Was anything due 
to man which he had not? anything promised him which was not 
performed? What action of debt, then, can the creature bring 
against God ? Indeed, when man began to neglect the light of his 
own reason, and became inconsiderate of the precept, God might 
have enlightened his understanding by a special flash, a supernatural 
beam, and imprinted upon him a particular consideration of the 
necessity of his obedience, the misery he was approaching to by his 
sin, the folly of any apprehension of an equality in knowledge; he 
might have convinced him of the falsity of the serpent’s arguments, 
and uncased to him the venom that lay under those baits. But how 
doth it appear that God was bound to those additional acts when he 
had already lighted up in him a “ spirit, which was the candle of the 
Lord” (Prov. xx. 27), whereby he was able to discern all, if he had 
attended to it. It was enough that God did not necessitate man to 
sin, did not counsel him to it; that he had given him sufficient warn- 
ing in the threatening, and sufficient strength in his faculties, to for- 
tify him against temptation. He gave him what was due to him as 
a creature of hig own framing; he withdrew no help from him, that 
was due to him as a creature, and what was not due he was not bound 
to impart. Man did not beg preserving grace of God, and God was 
not bound to offer it, when he was not petitioned for it especially: 
yet if he had begged it, God having before furnished him sufficiently, 
might, by the right of his sovereign dominion, have denied it with- 
out any impeachment of his holiness and righteousness. ‘Though he 
would not in such a case have dealt so bountifully with his creature 
as he might have done, yet he could not have been impleaded, as 
dealing unrighteously with his creature. The single word that God 
had already uttered, when he gave him his precept, was enough to 
oppose against all the devil’s wiles, which tended to invalidate that 
word: the understanding of man could not imagine that the word 
of God was vainly spoken; and the very suggestion of the devil, as 
if the Creator should envy his creature, would have appeared ridic- 
ulous, if he had attended to the voice of his own reason. God had 
done enough for him, and was obliged to do no more, and dealt not 
unrighteously in leaving him to act according to the principles of his 
nature. ‘'o conclude, if God’s permission of sin were enough to 
charge it upon God, or if God had been obliged to give Adam super- 
natural grace, Adam, that had so capacious a brain, could not be 
without that plea in his mouth, “ Lord thou mightest have prevented 
it; the commission of it by me could not have been without thy per- 
mission of it:” or, “ Thou hast been wanting to me, as the author of 
my nature.” No such plea is brought by Adam into the court, 
when God tried and cast him; no such pleas can have any strength 
in them. Adam had reason enough to know, that there was suffi- 
cient reason to overrule such a plea. 

Since the permission of sin casts no dirt upon the holiness of God, 


154 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


as I think hath been cleared, we may under this head consider two 
things more. 

1. That God’s permission of sin is not so much as his restraint or 
limitation of it. Since the entrance of the first sin into the world by 
Adam, God is more a hinderer than a permitter of it. If he hath 
permitted that which he could have prevented, he prevents a world 
more, that he might, if he pleased, permit: the hedges about sin are 
larger than the outlets; they are but a few streams that glide about 
the world, in comparison of that mighty torrent he dams up both in 
men and devils. He that understands what a lake of Sodom is in 
every man’s nature, since the universal infection of human nature, 
as the apostle describes it (Rom. ii. 9, 10, &c.), must acknowledge, 
that if God should cast the reins upon the necks of sinful men, they 
would run into thousands of abominable crimes, more than they do: 
the impression of all natural laws would be rased out, the world 
would be a public stew, and a more bloody slaughter house; human 
society would sink into a chaos; no starlight of commendable mo- 
rality would be seen in it; the world would be no longer an earth, 
but an hell, and have lain deeper in wickedness than it doth. If 
God did not limit sin, as he doth the sea, and put bars to the waves 
of the heart, as well as those of the waters, and say of them, “‘ Hither- 
to you shall go, and no further;” man hath such a furious ocean in 
him, as would overflow the banks; and where it makes a breach in 
one place, it would in a thousand, if God should suffer it to act ac- 
cording to its impetuous current. As the devil hath lust enough to 
destroy all mankind, if God did not bridle him; deal with every 
man as he did with Job, ruin their comforts, and deform their bodies 
with scabs; infect religion with a thousand more errors; fling dis- 
orders into commonwealths, and make them as a fiery furnace, full 
of nothing but flame; if he were not chained by that powerful arm, 
that might let him loose to fulfil his malicious fury; what rapines, 
murders, thefts, would be committed, if he did not stint him! Abi- 
melech would not only lust after Sarah, but deflour her; Laban not 
only pursue Jacob, but rifle him; Saul not only hate David, but 
murder him; David not only threaten Nabal, but root him up, and 
his family, did not God girdle in the wrath of man:* a greater re- 
mainder of wrath is pent in, than flames out, which yet swells for an 
outlet. God may be concluded more holy in preventing men’s sins, 
than the author of sin in permitting some; since, were it not for his 
restraints by the pull-back of conscience, and infused motions and 
outward impediments, the world would swarm more with this cursed 
brood. 

2. His permission of sin is in order to his own glory, and a greater 
good. It is no reflection upon the Divine goodness to leave man to 
his own conduct, whereby such a deformity as sin sets foot in the 
world; since he makes his wisdom illustrious in bringing good out 
of evil, and a good greater than that evil he suffered to spring up.! 
God did not permit sin, as sin, or permit it barely for itself. As sin 
is not lovely in its own nature, so neither is the permission of sin 
intrinsically good or amiable for itself, but for those ends aimed at in 

k Ps. lxxvi. 10, as the word “restrain” signifies. 1 Majus bonum, saith Bradward. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 155 


the permission of it. God permitted sin, but approved not of the 
object of that permission, sin; because that, considered in its own 
nature, is solely evil: nor can we think that God could approve of 
the act of permission, considered only in itself as an act; but as it 
respected that event which his wisdom would order by it. We can- 
not suppose that God should permit sin, but for some great and glo- 
rious end: for it is the manifestation of his own glorious perfections 
he intends in all the acts of his will (Prov. xvi. 4), “The Lord hath 
made all things for himself”— 5s» hath wrought all things; which 
is not only his act of creation, but ordination: “for himself,” that is, 
for the discovery of the excellency of his nature, and the communi- 
eation of himself to his creature. Sin indeed, in its own nature, hath 
no tendency to a good end; the womb of it teems with nothing but 
monsters; it is a spurn at God’s sovereignty, and a slight of his good- 
ness: it both deforms and torments the person that acts it; it is 
black and abominable, and hath not a mite of goodness in the nature 
of it. If it ends in any good, it is only from that Infinite transcen- 
dency of skill, that can bring good out of evil, as well as light out 
of darkness. Therefore God did not permit it as sin, but as it was 
an occasion for the manifestation of his own glory. Though the 
goodness of God would have appeared in the preservation of the 
world, as well as it did in the creation of it, yet his mercy could not 
have appeared without the entrance of sin, because the object of 
mercy 1s a miserable creature ; but man could not be miserable as 
long as he remained innocent. The reign of sin opened a door ‘for 
the reign and triumph of grace (Rom. v. 21), “ As sin hath reigned 
unto death, so might grace reign through righteousness to eternal 
life ;” without it, the bowels of mercy had never sounded, and the 
ravishing music of Divine grace could never have been heard by the 
creature. Mercy, which renders God so amiable, could never else 
have beamed out to the world. Angels and men upon this occasion 
beheld the stirrings of Divine grace, and the tenderness of Divine na- 
ture, and the glory of the Divine persons in their several functions 
about the redemption of man, which had else been a spring shut up, 
and a fountain sealed; the song of glory to God, and good will to 
men in a way of redemption had never been sung by them. It ap- 
pears in his dealing with Adam, that he permitted his fall, not only 
to show his justice in punishing, but principally his mercy in rescu- 
ing; since he proclaims to him first the promise of a Redeemer to 
“bruise the serpent’s head,” before he settled the punishment he 
should smart under in the world (Gen. iii. 15—17). And what fairer 
prospect could the creature have of the holiness of God, and his ha- 
tred of sin, than in thesedge of that sword of justice, which punished 
it in the sinner; but glittered more in the punishment of a Surety so 
near allied to him? Had not man been criminal, he could not have 
been punishable, nor any been punishable for him: and the pulse of 
Divine holiness could not have beaten so quick, and been so visible, 
without an exercise of his vindicative justice. He left man’s mutable 
nature, to fall under righteousness, that thereby he might commend 
the righteousness of his own nature (Rom. iii. 7). Adam’s sin in its 
nature tended to the ruin of the world, and God takes an occasion 


156 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


from it for the glory of his grace in the redemption of the world ; he 
brings forth thereby a new scene of wonders from heaven, and a sur- 
prising knowledge on earth; as the sun breaks out more strongly 
after a night of darkness and tempest. As God in creation framed 
a chaos by his power, to manifest his wisdom in bringing order out 
of disorder, light out of darkness, beauty out of confusion and de- 
formity, when he was able by a word to have made all creatures 
stand up in their beauty, without the precedency of a chaos; so God 
permitted a moral chaos to manifest a greater wisdom in the repair- 
ing a broken image, and restoring a deplorable creature, and bring: 
ing out those perfections of his nature, which had else been wrapt up 
in a perpetual silence in his own bosom. It was therefore very con- 
gruous to the holiness of God to permit that which he could make 
subservient for his own glory, and particularly for the manifestation 
of this attribute of holiness, which seems to be in opposition to such 
a permission.™ 

_ Prop. V. The holiness of God is not blemished by his concurrence 
with the creature in the material part of a sinful act. Some to free 
God from having any hand in sin, deny his concurrence to the ac- 
tions of the creature; because, if he concurs to a sinful action, he 
concurs to the sin also: not understanding how there can be a dis- 
tinction between the act, and the sinfulness or viciousness of it; and 
how God can concur to a natural action, without being stained by 
that moral evil which cleaves to it. For the understanding of this, 
observe, 

1. There is a concurrence of God to all the acts of the creature 
(Acts xvii. 28); ‘in him we live, and move, and have our being.” 
We depend upon God in our acting as well as in our being: there is 
as much an efficacy of God in our motion as in our production; as 
none have life without his power in producing it, so none have any 
operation without his providence concurring with it. In him, or by 
him, that is, by his virtue preserving and governing our motions, as 
well as by his power bringing us into being. Hence man is com- 
pared to an axe (Isa. x. 15), an instrument that hath no action, with- 
out the co-operation of a superior agent handling it: and the actions 
of the second causes are ascribed to God; the grass, that is, the pro- 
duct of the sun, rain, and earth, he is said to make to grow upon the 
mountains (Ps. exlvu. 8); and the skin and flesh, which is by natural 
generation, he is said to clothe us with (Job x. 5), in regard of his 
co-working with second causes, according to their natures. As 
nothing can exist, so nothing can operate without him; let his con- 
currence be removed, and the being and action of the creature cease ; 
remove the sun from the horizon, or a candlesefrom a room, and the 
light which flowed from either of them ceaseth. Without God’s 
preserving and concurring power, the course of nature would sink, 
and the creation be in vain. All created things depend upon God 
as agents, as well as beings, and are subordinate to him in a way of 
action, as well as in a way of existing." If God suspend his infiu- 
ence from their action, they would cease to act, as the fire did from 


m But of the wisdom of God in the permitting sin in order to redemption, I have han- 
dled in the attribute of “ Wisdom.” » Suarez, Metaph. Part I. p. 552. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 157 


burning the three children, as well as if God suspend his influence 
from their being, they would cease to be. God supports the nature 
whereby actions are wrought, the mind where actions are consulted, 
and the will where actions are determined, and the motive-power 
whereby actions are produced. The mind could not contrive, nor 
the hand act, a wickedness, if God did not support the power of the 
one in designing, and the strength of the other in executing a wicked 
intention. Every faculty in its being, and every faculty in its mo- 
tion, hath a dependence upon the influence of God. ‘To make the 
creature independent upon God in anything which speaks perfection, 
as action considered as action is, is to make the creature a sovereign 
being. Indeed, we cannot imagine the concurrence of God to the 
good actions of men since the fall, without granting a concurrence 
of God to evil actions; because there is no action so purely good but 
hath a mixture of evil in it, though it takes its denomination of good 
from the better part (Eccles. vii. 20), ‘There is no man that doth 
good, and sins not.” 

2. Though the natural virtue of doing a sinful action be from God, 
and supported by him, yet this doth not blemish the holiness of 
God; while God concurs with them in the act, he instils no evil into 
men. 

(1.) No act, in regard of the substance of it, is evil. Most of the 
actions of our faculties, as they are actions, might have been in the 
state of innocency. Hating is an act Adam would have used if he 
had stood firm, but not eating to excess. Worship was an act that 
should have been performed to God in innocence, but not hypocriti- 
eally. Every action is good by a physical goodness, as it is an act of 
the mind or hand, which have a natural goodness by creation; but 
every action is not morally good: the physical goodness of the ac- 
tion depends on God, the moral evil on the creature. There is no 
action, as a corporeal action, is prohibited by the law of God; but 
as it springs from an evil disposition, and is tainted by a venomous 
temper of mind. There is no action so bad, as attended with such 
objects and circumstances; but if the objects and circumstances 
were changed, might be a brave and commendable action: so that 
the moral goodness or badness of an act is not to be esteemed: from 
the substance of the act, which hath always a physical goodness ; 
but from the objects, circumstances, and constitution of the mind in 
the doing of it. Worship is an act good in itself; but the worship 
of an image is bad in regard of the object. Were that act of wor- 
ship directed to God that is paid to a statue, and offered up to him 
with a sincere frame of mind, it would be morally good. The act, 
in regard of its substance, is the same in both, and considered as 
separated from the object to which the worship is directed, hath the 
same real goodness in regard of the substance ; but when you con- 
sider this action in relation to the different objects, the one hath a 
moral goodness, and the other a moral evil. Soin speaking: speak- 
ing being a motion of the tongue in the forming of words, is an ex- 
eellency belonging to a reasonable creature ; an endowment bestow- 
ed, continued, and supported by God. Now, if the same tongue 

° Amyrald, de Libero arbit. pp. 98, 99. 


158 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


forms words whereby it curseth God this minute, and forms words 
whereby it blesses and praises God the next minute, the faculty of 
speaking is the same, the motion of the tongue is the same in pro- 
nouncing the name of God either in a way of cursing or blessing 
(James i. 9,10); it is the ‘‘same mouth that blesseth and curseth ;” 
and the motion of it is naturally good in regard of the substance of 
the act in both; it is the use of an excellent power God hath given, 
and which God preserves, in the use of it. But the estimation of 
the moral goodness or evil is not from the act itself, but from the 
disposition of the mind. Once more: killing, as an act is good; 
nor is it unlawful as an act; for if so, God would never have com- 
manded his people Israel to wage any war, and justice could not be 
done upon malefactors by the magistrate. A man were bound to 
sacrifice his life to the fury of an invader, rather than secure it by 
dispatching that of an enemy; but killing an.innocent, or killing 
without authority, or out of revenge, is bad. It is not the material 
part of the act, but the object, manner, and circumstance, that makes 
it good or evil. It is no blemish to God’s holiness to concur to the 
substance of an action, without having any hand in the immorality 
of it; because, whatsoever is real in the substance of the action 
might be done without evil. It is not evil as it is an act, as it is a 
motion of the tongue or hand, for then every motion of the tongue 
or hand would be evil. 

(2.) Hence it follows, that an act, as an act, is one thing, and the 
viciousness another. The action is the efficacy of the faculty, ex- 
tending itself to some outward object; but the sinfulness of an act 
consists in a privation of that comeliness and righteousness which 
ought to be in an action; in a want of conformity of the act with 
the law of God, either written in nature, or revealed in the Word.p 
Now, the sinfulness of an action is not the act itself, but is considered 
in it as it is related to the law, and is a deviation from it; and so it 
is something cleaving to the action, and therefore to be distinguished 
from the act itself, which is the subject of the sinfulness. When we 
say such an action is sinful, the action is the subject, and the sinful- 
ness of the action is that which adheres to it. The action is not the 
sinfulness, nor the sinfulness the action; they are distinguished as 
the member, and a disease in the member, the arm and the palsy in 
it: the arm is not the palsy, nor is the palsy the arm; but the palsy 
is a disease that cleaves to the arm: so sinfulness is a deformity that 
cleaves to an action. The evil of an action is not the effect of an 
action, nor attends it as it is an action, but as it is an action so circum- 
stantiated, and conversant about this or that object; for the same 
action done by two several persons, may be good in one, and bad in 
the other; as when two judges are in joint commission for the trial 
of a malefactor, both upon the appearance of his guilt condemn 
him. This action in both, considered as an action, is good; for itis 
an adjudging a man to death, whose crime deserves sach a punish- 
ment. But this same act, which is but one joint act of both, may 
be morally good in one judge, and morally evil in the other: morally 
good in him that condemns him out of an unbiassed consiJeration 

P Amyrald, pp. 821, 332. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 159 


of the demerit of his fact, obedience to the law, and conscious of the 
duty of his place; and morally evil in- the other, who hath no 
respect to those considerations, but joins in the act of condemnation, 
principally moved by some private animosity against the prisoner, 
and desire of revenge for some injury he hath really received, or 
imagines that he hath received from him. The act in itself is the 
same materially in both ; but in one it is an act of justice, and in the 
other an act of murder, as it respects the principles and motives of it 
in the two judges; take away the respect of private revenge, and 
the action in the ill judge had been as laudable as the action of the 
other. The substance of an act, and the sinfulness of an act, are 
separable and distinguishable ; and God may concur with the sub- 
stance of an act, without concurring with the sinfulness of the act: 
as the good judge, that condemned the prisoner out of conscience, 
concurred with the evil judge, who condemned the prisoner out of pri- 
vate revenge ; not in the principle and motive of condemnation, but 
in the material part of condemnation. So God assists in that action 
of a man wherein sin is placed, but not in that which is the formal 
reason of sin, which is a privation of some perfection the action 
ought morally to have. 

(3.) It will appear further in this, that hence it follows that the 
action, and the viciousness of the action, may have two distinct 
causes. That may be a cause of the one that is not the cause of the 
other, and hath no hand in the producing of it. God concurs to the 
act of the mind as it counsels, and to the external action upon that 
counsel, as he preserves the faculty, and gives strength to the mind 
to consult, and the other parts to execute; yet he is not in the least 
tainted with the viciousness of the action. Though the action be 
from God as a concurrent cause, yet the ill quality of the action is 
solely from the creature with whom God concurs. The sun and the 
earth concur to the production of all the plants that are formed in 
the womb of the one, and midwifed by the other. The sun dis- 
tributes heat, and the earth communicates sap; it is the same heat 
dispersed by the one, and the same juice bestowed by the other: it 
hath not a sweet juice for one, and a sour juice for another. This gen- 
eral influx of the sun and earth is not the immediate cause that one 
plant is poisonous, and another wholesome ; but the sap of the earth 
is turned by the nature and quality of each plant: if there were not 
such an influx of the sun and earth, no plant could exert that 
poison which is in its nature; but yet the sun and earth are not the 
cause of that poison which is in the nature of the plant. If God 
did not concur to the motions of men, there could be no sinful ac- 
tion, because there could be no action at all; yet this concurrence is 
not the cause of that venom that is in the action, which ariseth from 
the corrupt nature of the creature, no more than the sun and earth 
are the cause of the poison of the plant, which is purely the effect 
of its own nature upon that general influx of the sun and earth. 
Ihe influence of God pierceth through all subjects; but the action 
of man done by that influence is vitiated according to the nature of 
its own corruption. As the sun equally shines through all the 
quarrels in the window; if the glass be bright and clear, there is a 


160 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


so splendor; if it be red or green, the splendor is from the sun ; 
ut the discoloring of that light upon the wall, is from the qualit 
of the glass. But to be yet plainer: the soul is the image of God, 
and by the acts of the soul, we may come to the knowledge of the 
acts of God; the soul gives motion to the body and every member 
of it, and no member could move without a concurrent virtue of the 
soul; if a member be paralytic or gouty, whatsoever motion that 
gouty member hath, is derived to it from the soul; but the goutiness 
of the member was not the act of the soul, but the fruit of ill hu- 
mors in the body; the lameness of the member, and the motion of 
the member, have two distinct causes; the motion is from one cause, 
and ill motion from another. As the member could not move 
irregularly without some ill humor or cause of that distemper, so it 
could not move at all without the activity of the soul: so, though 
God concur to the act of understanding, willing, and execution, why 
can he not be as free from the irregularity in all those, as the soul is 
_ free from the irregularity of the motion of the body, while it is the 
cause of the motion itself? There are two illustrations generally 
used in this case, that are not unfit; the motion of the pen in writ 
ing is from the hand that holds it, but the blurs by the pen are from 
some fault in the pen itself: and the music of the instrument is from 
the hand that touches it, but the jarring from the faultiness of the 
strings; both are the causes of the motion of the pen and strings, 
but not the blurs or jarrings. 

(4). It is very congruous to the wisdom of God, to move his crea- 
tures according to their particular natures; but this motion makes 
him not the cause of sin. Had our innocent nature continued, God 
had moved us according to that innocent nature; but when the 
state was changed for a corrupt one, God must either forbear all 
concourse, and so annihilate the world, or move us according to 
that nature he finds in us. If he had overthrown the world upon 
the entrance of sin, and created another upon the same terms, sin 
might have as soon defaced his second work, as it did the first; and 
then it would follow, that God would have been alway building and 
demolishing. It was not fit for God to cease from acting as a wise 
governor of his creature, because man did cease from his loyalty as 
a subject. Is it not more agreeable to God’s wisdom as a governor, 
to concur with his creature according to his nature, than to deny 
his concurrence upon every evil determination of the creature? 
God concurred with Adam’s mutable nature in his first act of sin; 
he concurred to the act, and left him to his mutability. If Adam 
had put out his hand to eat of any other unforbidden fruit, God would 
have supported his natural faculty then, and concurred with him in 
his motion. When Adam would put out his hand to take the 
forbidden fruit, God concurred to that natural action, but left him 
to the choice of the object, and to the use of his mutable nature: 
and when man became apostate, God concurs with him according 
to that condition wherein he found him, and cannot move him 
otherwise, unless he should alter that nature man had contracted. 
God moving the creature as he found him, is no cause of the ill 

4 Zanch. Tom. II. lib. iii, cap. 4, quest. iv. p. 226. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 161 


motion of the creature: as when a wheel is broken the space of a 
foot, it cannot but move ill in that part tll it be mended. He that 
moves it, uses the same motion (as it is his act) which he would 
have done had the wheel been sound; the motion is good in the 
mover, but bad in the subject: it is not the fault of him that moves 
it, but the fault of that wheel that is moved, whose breaches came 
by some other cause. A man doth not use to lay aside his watch 
for some irregularity, as long as itis capable of motion, but winds 
it up: why should God cease from concurring with his creature in 
its vital operations and other actions of his will, because there was 
a flaw contracted in that nature, that came right and true out of his 
hand? And as he that winds up his disordered watch, is in the 
same manner the cause of its motion then, as he was when it was 
regular, yet, by that act of his, he is not the cause of the false 
motion of it. but that is from the deficiency of some part of the watch 
itself: so, though God concurs to that action of the creature, whereby 
the wickedness of the heart is drawn out, yet is not God therefore 
as unholy as the heart. 
(5.) God hath one end in his concurrence, and man another in 
his action: so that there is a righteous, and often a gracious end in 
God, when there is a base and unworthy end in man. God concurs 
to the substance of the act; man produceth the circumstance of the 
act, whereby it is evil. God orders both the action wherein he con- 
curs, and the sinfulness over which he presides, as a governor, to 
his own ends. In Joseph’s case, man was sinful, and God merciful ; 
his brethren acted “envy,” and God designed “mercy” (Gen. xly. 
4,5). They would be rid of him as an eye-sore, and God concurred 
with their action to make him their preserver (Gen. 1. 20), “ Ye 
thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good.” God con- 
curred to Judas his action of betraying our Saviour; he supported 
his nature while he contracted with the priests, and supported his 
members while he was their guide to apprehend him; God’s end 
was the manifestation of his choicest love to man, and Judas’ end 
was the gratification of his own covetousness. The Assyrian did a 
divine work against Jerusalem, but not with a Divine end (Isa. x. 
5—7). He had amind to enlarge his empire, enrich his coffers 
with the spoil, and gain the title of a conqueror; he is desirous to 
invade his neighbors, and God employs him to punish his rebels; 
but he means not so, nor doth his heart think so; he intended not 
as God intended. The axe doth not thmk what the carpenter in- 
tends to do with it. But God used the rapine of ambitious nature 
as an instrument of his justice; as the exposing malefactors to wild 
beasts was an ancient punishment, whereby the magistrates intended 
the execution of justice, and to that purpose used the natural 
fierceness of the beasts to an end different from what those ravaging 
creatures aimed at. God concurred with Satan in spoiling Job of 
his goods, and scarifying his body; God gave Satan licence to do 
it, and Job acknowledges it to be God’s act (Job i. 12—21); but 
their ends were different; God concurred with Satan for the clearing 
the integrity of his servant, when Satan aimed at nothing but the 


provoking him to curse his Creator. The physician applies leeches 
vot. 1—11 


162 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRI! JTES. 


to suck the superfluous blood, but the leeches suck to glut them- 
selves, without any regard to the intention of the physician, and the 
welfare of the patient. In the same act where men intend to hurt, 
God intends to correct; so that his concurrence is in a holy manner, 
while men commit unrighteous actions. A judge commands the 
executioner to execute the sentence of death, which he hath justly 
pronounced against a malefactor, and admonisheth him to do it out 
of love to justice; the executioner hath the authority of the judge 
for his commission, and the protection of the judge for his security ; 
the judge stands by to countenance and secure him in the doing of 
it; but if the executioner hath not the same intention as the judge, 
viz. a love to justice in the performance of his office, but a private 
hatred to the offender, the judge, though he commanded the fact of 
the executioner, yet did not command this error of his in it; and 
though he protects him in the fact, yet he owns not this corrupt dis- 
eee in him in the doing what was enjoined him, as any act of 
is own. 

To conclude this. Since the creature cannot act without God, 
cannot lift up a hand, or move his tongue, without God’s preserving 
and upholding the faculty, and preserving the power of action, and 
preserving every member of the body in its actual motion, and im 
every circumstance of its motion, we must necessarily suppose God 
to have such a way of concurrence as doth not intrench upon his 
holiness. We must not equal the creature to God, by denying his 
dependence on him; nor must we imagine such a concurrence to 
the sinfulness of an act, as stains the Divine purity, which is, I 
think, sufficiently salved by distinguishing the matter of the act 
from the evil adhering to it; for since all evil is founded in some 
good, the evil is distinguishable from the good, and the deformity 
of the action from the action itself; which, as it is a created act, 
hath a dependence on the will and influence of God; and as it is a 
sinful act, is the product of the will of the creature. 

Prop. VI. The holiness of God is not blemished by proposing 
objects to a man, which he makes use of to sin. There is no object 
proposed to man, but is directed by the providence of God, which 
influenceth all the motions in the world; and there is no object pro- 
posed to man, but his active nature may, according to the goodness 
or badness of his disposition, make a good or an ill use of That 
two men, one of a charitable, the other of a hard-hearted disposition, © 
meet with an indigent and necessitous object, is from the providence 
of God; yet this indigent person is relieved by the one, and neglected 
by the other. There could be no action in the world, but about some 
object; there could be no object offered to us but by Divine Provi- 
dence; the active nature of man would be in vain, if there were not 
objects about which it might be exercised. Nothing could present 
itself to man as an object, either to excite his grace, or awaken his 
corruption, but by the conduct of the Governor of the world. That 
David should walk upon the battlements of his palace, and Bath- 
sheba be in the bath at the same time, was from the Divine Provi- 
dence which orders all the affairs of the world (2 Sam. xi. 7); and so 
some understand (Jer. vi. 21): “Thus saith the Lord, I will lay 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 163 


stumbling-blocks before this people, and the fathers and sons together 
shall fall upon them.” Since they have offered sacrifices without 
those due qualifications in their hearts, which were necessary to ren- 
der them acceptable to me, I will lay in their way such objects, which 
their corruption will use ill to their farther sin and ruin; so (Ps. cv. 
25), ‘He turned their heart to hate his people;” that is, by the multi- 
plying his people, he gave occasion to the Kgyptians of hating them, 
instead of caressing them, as they had formerly done. But God's 
holiness is not blemished by this; for, 

1. This proposing or presenting of objects invades not the liberty 
of any man. ‘The tree of the knowledge of good and evil, set in the 
midst of the garden of Eden, had no violent influence on man to 
force him to eat of it; his liberty to eat of it, or not, was reserved 
entire to himself; no such charge can be brought against any object 
whatsoever. Ifa man meet accidentally at a table with meat that is 
grateful to his palate, but hurtful to the present temper of his body, 
doth the presenting this sort of food to him strip him of his liberty 
to decline it, as well as to feed of it? Can the food have any internal 
influence upon his will, and lay the freedom of it asleep whether he 
will or no? Is there any charm in that, more than in other sorts of 
diet? No; but it is the habit of love which he hath to that particu- 
lar dish, the curiosity of his fancy, and the strength of his own appe- 
tite, whereby he is brought into a kind of slavery to that particular 
meat, and not anything in the food itself. When the word is pro- 
posed to two persons, it is embraced by the one, rejected by the 
other; is it from the word itself, which is the object, that these two 
persons perform different acts? The object is the same to both, but 
the manner of acting about the object is not the same; is there any 
invasion of their liberty by it? Is the one forced by the word to 
receive it, and the other forced by the word to reject it? Two such 
contrary effects cannot proceed from one and the same cause; out- 
ward things have only an objective influence, not an inward; if the 
mere proposal of things did suspend or strike down the liberty of 
man, no angels in heaven, no man upon earth, no, not our Saviour 
himself, could do anything freely, but by force; objects that are ill 
used are of God’s creation, and though they have allurements in 
them, yet they have no compulsive power over the will." The fruit 
of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was pleasing to the sight; 
it had a quality to allure; there had not else needed a prohibition to 
bar the eating of it; but it could not have so much power to allure, 
as the Divine threatening to deter. 

2. The objects are good in themselves, but the ill use of them 1s 
from man’s corruption. Bathsheba was, by God’s providence, pre- 
sented to David’s sight, but it was David’s disposition moved him to 
so evil an act; what if God knew that he would use that object ill? 
- yet he knew he had given him a power to refrain from any ill use 
of it; the objects are innocent, but our corruption poisons them. 
The same object hath been used by one to holy purposes and holy 
improvements, that hath been used by another to sinful ends; when 
a charitable object is presented to a good man, and a cruel man, one 

* Amyral. de Libero arbit. p. 224. 


164 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


relieves him, the other reviles him; the object was rather an occasion 
to draw out the charity of one, as well as the other; but the refusing 
to reach out a helping hand, was not from the person in calamity, 
but the disposition of the refuser to whom he was presented; it is 
not from the nature of the object that men do good or evil, but from 
the disposition of the person; what is good in itself, is made bad by 
our corruption. As the same meat which nourishes and strengthens 
a sound constitution, cherisheth the disease of another that eats at 
the same table, not from any unwholesome quality in the food, but 
the vicious quality of the humors lodging in the stomach, which turn 
the diet into fuel for themselves, which in its own nature was apt to 
engender a wholesome juice. Some are perfected by the same things 
whereby others are ruined. Riches are used by some, not only for 
their own, but the advantage of others in the world; by others only 
for themselves, and scarcely so much as their necessities require. Is 
this the fault of the wealth, or the dispositions of the persons, who 
are covetous instead of being generous? It is a calumny, therefore, 
- upon God to charge him with the sin of man upon this account. 
The rain that drops from the clouds upon the plants is sweet in 
itself, but when it moistens the root of any venomous plant, it is 
turned into the juice of the plant, and becomes venomous with it. 
The miracles that our Saviour wrought, were applauded by some, 
and envied by the Pharisees; the sin arose not from the nature of 
the miracles, but the malice of their spirits. The miracles were fitter 
in their own nature to have mduced them to an adoration of our 
Saviour, than to excite so vile a passion against one that had so 
many marks from heaven to dignify him, and proclaim him worthy 
of their respect. The person of Christ was an object proposed to the 
Jews; some worship him, others condemn and crucify him, and 
according to their several vices and base ends they use this object. 
Judas to content his covetousness, the Pharisees to glut their revenge, 
Pilate for his ambition, to preserve himself in his government, and 
avoid the articles the people might charge him with of countenancing 
an enemy to Cesar. God at that time put into their minds a rational 
and true proposition which they apply to ill purposes.s Caiaphas 
said, that ‘it was expedient for one man to die for the people,” which 
“he spake not of himself” (John xi. 50, 51). God put it into his 
mind; but he might have applied it better than he did, and consid- 
ered, though the maxim was commendable, whether it might justly 
be applied to Christ, or whether there was such a necessity that he 
must die, or the nation be destroyed by the Romans. The maxim 
was sound and holy, decreed by God; but what an ill use did the 
high-priest make of it to put Christ to death as a seditious person, to 
save the nation from the Roman fury! 

3. Since the natural corruption of men will use such objects ill, 
may not God, without tainting himself, present such objects to them 
in subserviency to his gracious decrees? Whatsoever God should 
present to men in that state, they would make an ill use of; hath 
not God, then, the sovereign prerogative to present what he pleases, 
and suppress others? 'T'o offer that to them which may serve his 

* Amyrald, Ironic. p. 337. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 165 


holy purpose, and hide other things from them which are not so con- 
ducing to his gracious ends, which would be as much the occasions 
of exciting their sin, as the others which he doth bring forth to their 
view? The Jews, at the time of Christ, were of a turbulent and 
seditious humor; they expected a Messiah, a temporal king, and 
would readily have embraced any occasion to have been up in arms 
to have delivered themselves from the Roman yoke; to this purpose 
the people attempted once to make him king: and probably the 
expectation they had that he had such a design to head them, might 
be one reason of their “hosannas;” because without some such con- 
eeit it was not probable they should so soon change their note, and 
vote him to the cross in so short a time, after they had applauded 
him as if he had been upon a throne; but their being defeated of 
strong expectations, usually ended in a more ardent fury. This tur- 
bulent and seditious humor God directs in another channel, suppres- 
seth all occurrences that might excite them to a rebellion against the 
Romans, which, if he had given way to, the crucifying Christ, which 
was God's design to bring about at that time, had not probably been 
effected, and the salvation of mankind been hindered or stood at a 
stay for atime. God, therefore, orders such objects and occasions, 
that might direct this seditious humor to another channel, which 
would else have run out in other actions, which had not been conduc- 
ing to the great design he had then in the world. Is it not the right 
of God, and without any blemish to his holiness, to use those corrup- 
tions which he finds sown in the nature of his creature by the hand 
of Satan, and to propose such objects as may excite the exercise of 
them for his own service? Sure God hath as much right to serve 
himself of the creature of his own framing, and what natures soever 
they are possessed with, and to present objects to that purpose, as a 
falconer hath to offer this or that bird to his hawk to exercise his 
courage, and excite his ravenousness, without being termed the author 
of that ravenousness in the creature. God planted not those corrup- 
tions in the Jews, but finds them in those persons over whom he 
hath an absolute sovereignty in the right of a Creator, and that of a 
Judge for their sins: and by the right of that sovereignty may offer 
such objects and occasions, which, though innocent in themselves, 
he knows they will make use of to ill purposes, but which by the 
same decree that he resolves to present such occasions to them, he 
also resolves to make use of them for his own glory. It is not con- 
celvable by us what way that death of Christ, which was necessary 
for the satisfaction of Divine justice, could be brought about without 
ordering the evil of some men’s hearts by special occasions to effect 
his purpose; we cannot suppose that Christ can be guilty of any 
crime that deserved death by the Jewish law; had he been so a 
criminal, he could not have been a Redeemer: a perfect innocence 
was necessary to the design of his coming.t Had God himself put 
him to that death, without using instruments of wickedness in it, by 
Some remarkable hand from heaven, the innocence of his nature had 
seen forever eclipsed, and the voluntariness of his sacrifice had been 
obscured: the strangeness of such a judgment would have made his 
* This I have spoken of before, but it is necessary now. 


166 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


innocence incredible; he could not reasonably have been proposed 
as an object of faith. What, to believe in one that was struck dead 
by a hand from heaven? ‘The propagation of the doctrine of redemp- 
tion had wanted a foundation; and though God might have raised 
him again, the certainty of his death had been as questionable as his 
innocence in dying, had he not been raised. But God orders every- 
thing so as to answer his own most wise and holy ends, and maintain 
his truth, and the fulfilling the predictions of the minutest concerns 
about them, and all this by presenting occasions innocent in them- 
selves, which the corruptions of the Jews took hold of, and whereby 
God, unknown to them, brought about his own decrees: and may 
not this be conceived without any taint upon God’s holiness? for 
when there are seeds of all sin in man’s nature, why may not God 
hinder the sprouting up of this or that kind of seed, and leave liberty 
to the growth of the other, and shut up other ways of sinning, and 
restrain men from them, and let them loose to that temptation which 
he intends to serve himself of, hiding from them those objects which 
were not so serviceable to his purpose, wherein they would have 
sinned, and offer others, which he knew their corruption would use 
ill, and were serviceable to his ends; since the depravation of their 
natures would necessarily hurry them to evil without restraining 
ae as a scale will necessarily rise up when the weight in it, which 
ept it down, is taken away? 

Prop. VII. The holiness of God is not blemished by withdrawing 
his grace from a sinful creature, whereby he falls into more sin. 
That God withdraws his grace from men, and gives them up some- 
times to the fury of their lusts, is as clear in Scripture as anything 
(Deut. xxix. 4): ‘“ Yet the Lord hath not given you a heart to per- 
ceive, and eyes to see, and ears to hear,” &c. Judas was delivered 
to Satan after the sop, and put into his power, for despising former 
admonitions. He often leaves the reins to the devil, that he may 
use what efficacy he can in those that have offended the Majesty of 
God; he withholds further influences of grace, or withdraws what 
before he had granted them. Thus he withheld that grace from the 
sons of Hh, that might have made their father’s pious admonitions 
effectual to them (I Sam. 1. 25): “They hearkened not to the voice 
of their father, because the Lord would slay them.” He gave grace 
to Eli to reprove them, and withheld that grace from them, which 
might have enabled them against their natural corruption and ob- 
stinacy to receive that reproof. But the holiness of God is not blem- 
ished by this. 

1. Because the act of God in this is only negative.» Thus God is 
said to ‘‘ harden” men: not by positive hardening, or working any- 
thing in the creature, but by not working, not softening, leaving a 
man to the hardness of his own heart, whereby it is unavoidable by 
the depravation of man’s nature, and the fury of his passions, but 
‘that he should be further hardened, and “increase unto more un- 
godliness,” as the expression is (2 Tim. 1. 19). As a man is said to 
give another his life, when he doth not take it away when it lay at 
his mercy ; so God is said to “harden” a man, when he doth not 

u Testard, de Natur, et Grat, Thes. 150, 151. Amy on Divers Texts, p. 311. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 167 


mollify him when it was in his power, and inwardly quicken him 
with that grace whereby he might infallibly avoid any further pro- 
voking of him. God is said to harden men when he removes not 
from them the incentives to sin, curbs not those principles which 
are ready to comply with those incentives, withdraws the common 
assistances of his grace, concurs not with counsels and admonitions 
to make them effectual; flasheth not in the convincing light which 
he darted upon them before. If hardness follows upon God’s with- 
holding his softening grace, it is not by any positive act of God, but 
from the natural hardness of man. If you put fire near to wax or 
rosin, both will melt; but when that fire is removed, they return to 
their natural quality of hardness and brittleness; the positive act of 
the tire is to melt and soften, and the softness of the rosin is to be 
ascribed to that; but the hardness is from the rosin itself, wherein 
the tire hath no influence, but only a negative act by a removal of 
it: so, when God hardens a man, he only leaves him to that stony 
heart which he derived from Adam, and brought with him into the 
world. All men’s understandings being blinded, and their wills 
perverted in Adam, God’s withdrawing his grace is but a leaving 
them to their natural pravity, which is the cause of their further sin- 
ning, and not God's removal of that special light he before afforded 
them, or restraint he held over them. As when God withdraws his 
_ preserving power from the creature, he is not the efficient, but de- 
ficient cause of the creature’s destruction ; so, in this case, God only 
ceaseth to bind and dam up that sin which else would break out. 

2. Che whole positive cause of his hardness is from man’s corrup- 
tion. God infuseth not any sin into his creatures, but forbears to 
infuse his grace, and restrain their lusts, which, upon the removal of 
his grace, work impetuously: God only gives them up to that which 
he knows will work strongly in their hearts. And, therefore, the 
apostle wipes off from God any positive act in that uncleanness the 
heathens were given up to (Rom. i. 24, “ Wherefore God gave them 
up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts.” And, ver. 
26, God gave them up to “vile affections ;” but they were their own 
affections, none of God’s inspiring,) by adding, “through the lusts 
of their own hearts.” God's giving them up was the logical cause, 
or a cause by way of argument; their own lusts were the true and 
natural cause; their own they were, before they were given up to 
them, and belonging to none, as the author, but themselves, after 
they were given up to them. The lust in the heart, and the temp- 
tation without, easily close and mix interests with one another: as 
the fire in a coal pit will with the fuel, if the streams derived into it 
for the quenching it be dammed up: the natural passions will run 
to a temptation, as the waters of a river tumble towards the sea. 
When a man that hath bridled in a high-mettled horse from running 
out, gives him the reins; or a huntsman takes off the string that 
held the dog, and lets him run after the hare,—are they the imme- 
diate cause of the motion of the one, or the other ?—no, but the 
mettle and strength of the horse, and the natural inclination of the 
hound, both which are left to their own motions to pursue their own 
natural instincts. Man doth as naturally tend to sin as a stone to 


168 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


the centre, or as a weighty thing inclines to a motion to the earth z 
it is from the propension of man’s nature that he “ drinks up iniquity 
hike water :” and God doth no more when he leaves a man to sin, by 
taking away the hedge which stopped him, but leave him to his na- 
tural inclination. Asa man that breaks up adam he hath placed, 
leaves the stream to run in their natural channel; or one that takes 
away a prop from a stone to let it fall, leaves it only to that nature 
which inclines it to a descent; both have their motion from their 
own nature, and man is sin from his own corruption. The with- 
drawing the sunbeams is not the cause of darkness, but the shadi- 
ness of the earth; nor is the departure of the sun the cause of 
winter, but the coldness of the air and earth, which was tempered 
and beaten back into the bowels of the earth by the vigor of 
the sun, upon whose departure they return to their natural state: 
the sun only leaves the earth and air as it found them at the 
beginning of the spring or the beginning of the day.x If God 
do not give a man grace to melt him, yet he cannot be said to 
communicate to him that nature which hardens him, which man 
hath from himself. As God was not the cause of the first sin of 
Adam, which was the root of all other, so he is not the cause 
ef the following sins, which, as branches, spring from that root; 
man’s free-will was the cause of the first sin, and the corruption 
of his nature by it the cause of all succeeding sins. God doth 
not immediately harden any man, but doth propose those things, 
from whence the natural vice of man takes an occasion to 
strengthen and nourish itself. Hence, God is said to “harden 
Pharaoh’s heart” (Exod. vii. 13), by concurring with the magicians 
m turning their rods into serpents, which stiffened his heart 
against Moses, conceiving him by reason of that, to have no more 
power than other men, and was an occasion of his father harden- 
ing: and Pharaoh is said to “harden himself” (Hxod. vii. 32); 
that is, in regard of his own natural passion. 

3. God is holy and righteous, because he doth not withdraw from 
man, till man deserts him. To say, that God withdrew that grace 
from Adam, which he had afforded him in creation, or anything that 
was due to him, till he hadabused the gifts of God, and turned them 
to an end contrary to that of creation, would be a reflection upon 
the Divine holiness. God was first deserted by man before man 
was deserted by God; and man doth first contemn and abuse the 
common grace of God, and those relics of natural light, that “ en- 
hghten every man that comes into the world” (John i. 9); before 
God leaves him to the hurry of his own passions. Ephraim was 
first jomed to idols, before God pronounced the fatal sentence, ‘“ Let 
him alone” (Hos. iv. 17): and the heathens first changed the glory 
of the incorruptible God, before God withdrew his common grace 
from the corrupted creature (Rom. ». 23, 24); and they first “served 
the creature more than the Creator,” before the Creator gave them 
up to the slavish chains of their vile affections (ver. 25, 26). Israel 
first cast off God before God cast off them; but then “ he gave them 
up to their own hearts’ lusts, and they walked in their own counsels” 

* Amyrald, de Predest. p. 107. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 169 


(Ps. Ixxxi. 11, 12). Since sin entered into the world by the fall of 
Adam, and the blood of all his posterity was tainted, man cannot do 
anything that is formally good; not for want of faculties, but for 
the want of a righteous habit in those faculties, especially in the 
will; yet God discovers himself to man in the works of his hands; 
he hath left in him footsteps of natural reason; he doth attend him 
with common motions of his Spirit; corrects him for his faults with 
gentle chastisements. He is near unto all in some kind of instruc- 
tions: he puts many times providential bars in their way of sinning; 
but when they will rush into it as the horse into the battle, when 
they will rebel against the light, God doth often leave them to their 
own course, sentence him that is “ filthy to be filthy still” (Rev. xxii. 
11), which is a righteous act of God, as he is rector and governor of 
the world. Man’s not receiving, or not improving what God gives, 
is the cause of God’s not giving further, or taking away his own, 
which before he had bestowed; this is so far from being repugnant 
to the holiness and righteousness of God, that it is rather a commen- 
dable act of his holiness and righteousness, as the rector of the world, 
not to let those gifts continue in the hand of a man who abuses them 
contrary to his glory. Who will blame a father, that, after all the 
good counsels he hath given to his son to reclaim him, all the correc- 
tions he hath inflicted on him for his irregular practice, leaves him 
to his own courses, and withdraws those assistances which he scoffed 
at, and turned the deaf ear unto? Or, who will blame the physician 
for deserting the patient, who rejects his counsel, will not follow his 
prescriptions, but dasheth his physic against the wall? No man 
will blame him, no man will say that he is the cause of the patient’s 
death, but the true cause is the fury of the distemper, and the obsti- 
nacy of the diseased person, to which the physician left him. And 
who can justly blame God in this case, who yet never denied sup- 
plies of grace to any that sincerely sought it at his hands; and what 
man is there that lies under a hardness, but first was guilty of very 
provoking sins? What unholiness is it to deprive men of those as- 
sistances, because of their sin, and afterwards to direct those counsels 
and practices of theirs, which he hath justl y given them up unto, to 
serve the ends of his own glory in his own methods? 

4. Which will appear further by considering, that God is not 
obliged to continue his grace to them. It was at his liberty whether 
he could give any renewing grace to Adam after his fall, or to any 
of his posterity: he was at his own hberty to withhold it or com- 
municate it: but, if he were under any obligation then, surely he 
must be under less now, since the multiplication of sin by his crea- 
tures: but, if the obligation were none just after the fall, there is no 
pretence now to fasten any such obligation on God. That God had 
no obligation at first, hath been spoken to before; he is less obliged 
to continue his grace after a repeated refusal, and a peremptory abuse, 
than he was bound to proffer it after the first apostasy. God cannot 
be charged with unholiness in withdrawing his grace after we have 
received it, unless we can make it appear that his grace was a thing 
due to us, as we are his creatures, and as he is governor of the world. 
What prince looks upon himself as obliged to reside in any particu- 


170 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


lar place of his kingdom? But suppose he be bound to inhabit in 
one particular city, yet after the city rebels against him, is he bound 
to continue his court there, spend his revenue among rebels, endanger 
his own honor and security, enlarge their charter, or maintain their 
ancient privileges? Is it not most just and righteous for him to 
withdraw himself, and leave them to their own tumultuousness and 
sedition, whereby they should eat the fruit of their own doings? If 
there be an obligation on God as a governor, it would rather he on 
the side of justice to leave man to the power of the devil whom he 
courted, and the prevalency of those lusts he hath so often caressed ; 
and wrap up in a cloud all his common illuminations, and leave him 
destitute of all common workings of his Spirit. 

Prop. VII. God’s holiness is not blemished by his commanding 
those things sometimes which seem to be against nature, or thwart 
some other of his precepts; as when God commanded Abraham with 
his own hand to sacrifice his son (Gen. xxii. 2), there was nothing 
of unrighteousness in it. God hath a sovereign dominion over the 
lives and beings of his creatures, whereby as he creates one day, he 
might annihilate the next; and by the same right that he might de- 
mand the life of Isaac, as being his creature, he might demand the 
obedience of Abraham, in a ready return of that to him, which he 
had so long enjoyed by his grant. It is true, killing is unjust when 
it is done without cause, and by a private authority ; but the author- 
ity of God surmounts all private and public authority whatsoever. 
Our lives are due to him when he calls for them; and they are more 
than once forfeit to him by reason of transgression. But, howsoever 
the case is, God commanded him to do it for the trial of his grace, 
but suffered him not to do it in favor to his ready obedience; but 
had Isaac been actually slain and offered, how had it been unright- 
eous in God, who enacts laws for the regulation of his creature, but 
never intended them to the prejudice of the rights of his sovereignty ? 
Another case is that of the Israelities borrowing jewels of the Kgyp- 
tians, by the order of God (Exod. xi. 2,3; xii. 86). Is not God 
Lord of men’s goods, as well as their lives? What have any, they 
have not received? and that not as proprietors independent on God, 
but his stewards; and may not he demand a portion of his steward 
to bestow upon his favorite? He that had power to dispose of the 
Egyptians’ goods, had power to order the Israelites to ask them. 
Besides, God acted the part of a just judge in ordering them their 
wages for their service in this method, and making their task-masters 
give them some recompense for their unjust oppression so many 
years; it was a command from God, therefore, rather for the preser- 
vation of justice (the basis of all those laws which link human 
society), than any infringement of it. It was a material recompense 
in part, though not a formal one in the intention of the Egyptians ; 
it was but in part a recompense; it must needs come short of the 
damage the poor captives had sustained by the tyranny of their 
masters, who had enslaved them contrary to the rules of hospitality ; 
and could not make amends for the lives of the poor infants of Israel, 
whom they had drowned in the river. He that might for the unjust 
oppression of his people have taken away all their lives, destroyed 


id 
ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 171 


the whole nation, and put the Israelites into the possession of their 
lands, could, without any unrighteousness, dispose of part of their 
goods; and it was rather an act of clemency to leave them some 
part, who had doubly forfeited all. Again, the Egyptians were as 
ready to lend by God’s influence, as the Israelites were to ask by 
God’s order: and though it was a loan, God, as Sovereign of the 
world, and Lord of the earth, and the fulness thereof, alienated the 
property by assuming them to the use of the tabernacle, to which 
service, most, if not all of them, were afterwards dedicated. God, 
who is lawgiver, hath power to dispense with his own law, and make 
use of his own goods, and dispose of them as he pleases; it is no un- 
holiness in God to dispose of that which he hath a right unto. In- 
deed, God cannot command that which is in its own nature intrinsi- 
sically evil; as to command a rational creature not to love him, not 
to worship him, to call God to witness to a lie; these are intrinsi- 
cally evil; but for the disposing of the lives and goods of his crea- 
tures, which they have from him in right, and not in absolute pro- 
priety, is not evil in him, because there is no repugnancy in his own 
nature to such acts, nor is it anything inconsistent with the natural 
duty of a creature, and in such cases he may use what instruments 
he please. The point was, that holiness is a glorious perfection of 
the nature of God. We have showed the nature of this holiness in 
God; what it is; and we have demonstrated it, and proved that 
God is holy, and must needs be so; and also the purity of his nature 
in all his acts about sin: let us now improve it by way of use. 

IV. Is holiness a transcendent perfection belonging to the nature 
of God? The first use shall be of instruction and information. 

Inform. 1. How great and how frequent is the contempt of this 
eminent perfection in the Deity! Since the fall, this attribute, which 
renders God most amiable in himself, renders him most hateful to 
his apostate creature. It is impossible that he that loves iniquity, 
can affect that which is irreconcileably contrary to the iniquity he 
loves. Nothing so contrary to the sinfulness of man as the holiness 
of God, and nothing is thought of by the sinner with so much detes- 
tation. How do men account that which is the most glorious perfec- 
tion of the Divinity, unworthy to be regarded as an accomplishment 
of their own souls! and when they are pressed to an imitation of it, 
and a detestation of what is contrary to it, have the same sentiment 
in their heart which the devil had in his language to Christ, Why 
art thou come to torment us before our time? What an enmity the 
world naturally hath to this perfection, I think is visible in the prac- 
tice of the heathen, who among all their heroes which they deified, 
elevated none to that dignity among them for this or that moral vir- 
tue that came nearest to it, but for their valor or some usefulness in 
the concerns of this life. Msculapius was deified for his skill in the 
cure of diseases; Bacchus, for the use of the grape; Vulcan, for his 
operations by fire; Hercules, for his destroying of tyrants and mon- 
sters ; but none for their mere virtue; as if anything of purity were 
unworthy their consideration in the frame of a Deity, when it is the 
glory of all other perfections ; so essential it is, that when men reject 
the imitation of this, God regards it as a total rejection of himself, 


172 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


though they own all the other attributes of his nature (Ps. lxxxi. 11): 
“Tsrael would none of me:” why? because “‘ they walked not in his 
ways” (ver. 18); those ways wherein the purity of the Divine nature 
was most conspicuous; they would own him in his power, when they 
stood in need of a deliverance; they would own him in his mercy, 
when they were plunged in distress; but they would not imitate 
him in his holiness. This being the lustre of the Divine nature, the 
contempt of it is an obscuring all his other perfections, and a dash- 
ing a blot upon his whole escutcheon. To own all the rest, and deny 
him this, is to frame him as an unbeautiful monster,—a deformed 
power. Indeed, all sin is against this attribute ; all sin aims in gen- 
eral at the being of God, but in particular at the holiness of his Be- 
ing, All sin is a violence to this perfection ; there is not an iniquity 
in the world, but directs its venomous sting against the Divine pu- 
rity ; some sins are directed against his omniscience, as secret wick- 
edness; some against his providence, as distrust; some against his 
mercy, as unbelief; some against his wisdom, as neglecting the 
- Means instituted by him, censuring his ways and actings; some 
against his power, as trusting in means more than in God, and the 
immoderate fear of men more than of God; some against his truth, 
as distrusting his promise, or not fearing his threatening; but all 
agree together in their enmity against this, which is the peculiar 
glory of the Deity: every one of them is a receding from the Divine 
Image; and the blackness of every one is the deeper, by how much 
the distance of it from the holiness of God is the greater. ‘T’his con- 
trariety to the holiness of God, is the cause of all the absolute athe- 
ism (if there be any such) in the world; what was the reason ‘‘the 
fool hath said in his heart, There is no God,” but because the fool is 
“corrupt, and hath done abominable work” (Ps, xiv. 1)? If they 
believe the being of a God, their own reason will enforce them to 
imagine him holy; therefore, rather than fancy a holy God, they 
would fain fancy none at all—tIn particular, 

1. The holiness of God is injured, in unworthy representations of 
God, and imaginations of him in our own minds. The heathen fell 
under this guilt, and ascribed to their idols those vices which their 
own sensuality inclined them to, unworthy of a man, much more un- 
worthy of a God, that they might find a protection of their crimes in 
the practice of their idols. But is this only the notion of the hea- 
thens? may there not be many among us whose love to their lusts, 
and desires of sinning without control, move them to slander God in 
their thoughts, rather than reform their lives, and are ready to frame, 
by the power of their imaginative faculty, a God, not only winking, 
but smiling, at their impurities? I am sure God charges the im- 
pieties of men upon this score, in that Psalm (1. 21) which seems to 
be a representation of the day of judgment, as some gather from ver. 
6, when God sums up all together: ‘These things hast thou done, 
and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an 
one as thyself;” not a detester, but approver of thy crimes: and the 
Psalmist seems to express God’s loathing of sin in such a manner, as 
intimates it to be contrary to the ideas and resemblances men make 
of him in their minds (Ps. v. 4); ‘‘ For thou art not a God that hast 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 173 


pleasure in wickedness ;” as we say, in vindication of a man, he is 
not such a man as you imagine him to be; thou art not such a God 
as the world commonly imagines thee to be, a God taking pleasure 
in iniquity. It is too common for men to fancy God not as he is, 
but as they would have him; strip him of his excellency for their 
own security. As God made man after his image, man would dress 
God after his own modes, as may best suit the content of his lusts, 
and encourage him in a course of sinning; for, when they can frame 
such a notion of God, as if he were a countenancer of sin, they will 
derive from thence a reputation to their crimes, commit wickedness 
with an unbounded licentiousness, and crown their vices with the 
name of virtues, because thay are so like to the sentiments of that 
God they fancy: from hence (as the Psalmist, in the Psalm before 
mentioned) ariseth that mass of vice in the world; such conceptions 
are the mother and nurse of all impiety. I question not but the first 
spring is some wrong notion of God, in regard of his holiness: we 
are as apt to imagine God as we would have him, as the black Ethi- 
opians were to draw the image of their gods after their own dark hue, 
and paint him with their own color: as a philosopher in Theodoret 
speaks; If oxen and lions had hands, and could paint as men do, 
they would frame the images of their gods according to their own 
likeness and complexion. Such notions of God render him a swinish 
being, and worse than the vilest idols adored by the Egyptians, when 
men fancy a God indulgent to their appetites and most sordid lusts. 

2. In defacing the image of God in our own souls, God, in the 
first draught of man, conformed him to his own image, or made him 
an image of himself; because we find that in regeneration this image 
is renewed (Eph. iv. 24); “The new man, which, after God, is crea- 
ted in righteousness and true holiness. He did not take angels for 
his pattern, in the first polishing the soul, but himself. In defacing 
this image we cast dirt upon the holiness of God, which was his pat- 
tern in the framing of us, and rather choose to be conformed to Sa- 
tan, who is God’s grand enemy, to have God’s image wiped out of 
us, and the devil’s pictured in us: therefore, natural men, 10 an un- 
regenerate state, may justly be called devils, since our Saviour called 
the worst man, Judas, so (John vi. 1), and Peter, one of the best 
(Matt. xvi. 23): and if this title be given, by an infallible Judge, to 
one of the worst, and one of the best, it may, without wrong to any, 
be ascribed to all men that wallow in their sin, which is directly con- 
trary to that illustrious image God did imprint upon them. How 
often is it seen that men control the light of their own nature, and 
stain the clearest beams of that candle of the Lord in their own 
spirits, that fly in the face of their own consciences, and say to them, 
as Ahab to Micaiah, Thou didst “never prophesy good to me;” 
thou didst never encourage me in those things that are pleasing to 
the flesh; and use it at the same rate as the wicked king did the 
prophet, “imprison it in unrighteousness” (Rom. i. 18), because it 
starts up in them sometimes sentiments of the holiness of God, 
which it represents in the soul of man! How jolly are many men 
when the exhalations of their sensitive part rise up to cloud the ex- 
actest principle of moral nature in their minds, and render the mon- 


174 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


strous principles of the law of corruption more lively! Whence 
ariseth the wickedness which hath been committed with an open 
face in the world, and the applause that hath been often given to 
the worst of villanies? Have we not known, among ourselves, men 
to glory in their shame, and esteem that a most gentle accomplish- 
ment of man, which is the greatest blot upon his nature, and which, 
if it were upon God, would render him no God, but an impure devil ; 
so that to be a gentleman among us hath been the same as to be an 
incarnate devil; and to be a man, was to be no better, but worse, 
than a brute? Vile wretches! is not this a contempt of Divine holi- 
ness, to kill that Divine seed which hes languishing in the midst of 
corrupted nature ; to cut up any sprouts of it as weeds unworthy to 
grow in their gardens, and cultivate what is the seed of hell; prefer 
the rotten fruits of Sodom, marked with a Divine curse, before those 
relics of the fruits of Eden, of God’s own planting ? 

3. The holiness of God is injured in charging our sin upon God. 
Nothing is more natural to men, than to seek excuses for their sin, 
and transfer it from themselves to the next at hand, and rather than 
fail, shift it upon God himself; and if they can bring God into a 
society with them in sin, they will hug themselves in a security that 
God cannot punish that guilt wherein he is a partner. Adam’s chil- 
dren are not of a different disposition from Adam himself, who, after 
he was arraigned and brought to his trial, boggles not at flinging his 
dirt in the face of God, his Creator, and accuseth him as if he had 
given him the woman, not to be his help, but his ruin (Gen. i. 12); 
“ And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, 
she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.” He never supplicates for 
pardon, nor seeks a remedy, but reflects his crime upon God: Had 
I been alone, as I was first created, I had not eaten; but the woman, 
whom J received as a special gift from thee, hath proved my tempter 
and my bane. When man could not be like God in knowledge, he 
endeavored to make God like him in his crime; and when his am- 
bition failed of equalizing himself with God, he did, with an inso- 
lence too common to corrupted nature, attempt, by the imputation 
of his sin, to equal the Divinity with himself. Some think Cain had 
the same sentiment in his answer to God’s demand where his brother 
was (Gen. i. 9); “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Art not thou the 
Keeper and Governor of the world? why didst not thou take care 
of him, and hinder my killing him, and drawing this guilt upon my- 
self, and terror upon my conscience? David was not behind, when, 
after the murder of Uriah, he sweeps the dirt from his own door to 
God’s (2 Sam. xi. 25); “The sword devoureth one as well as an- 
other ;” fathering that solely upon Divine Providence which was his 
own wicked contrivance: though afterwards he is more ingenuous 
in clearing God, and charging himself (Ps. li. 4): ‘‘ Against thee, 
thee only have I sinned;” and he clears God in his judgment too. 
It is too common for the “foolishness of man to pervert his way ;” 
and then “his heart frets against the Lord” (Prov. xix. 8). He 
studies mischief, runs in a way of sin, and when he hath conjured up 
troubles to himself, by his own folly, he excuseth himself, and, with 
indignation, charges God as the author both of his sin and m‘sery, 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 175 


and sets his mouth against the heavens. It is a more horrible thing 
to accuse God asa principal or accessary in our guilt, than to con- 
ceive him to be a favorer of our iniquity; yet both are bad enough. 

4, The holiness of God is injured when men will study arguments 
from the holy word of God to color and shelter their crimes. When 
men will seek for a shelter for their lies, in that of the midwives to 
preserve the children, or in that of Rahab to save the spies, as if, 
because God rewarded their fidelity, he countenanced their sin. 
How often is Scripture wrested to be a plea for unbecoming prac- 
tices, that God, in his word, may be imagined a patron for their in- 
iguity? It is not unknown that some have maintained their quaff- 
ing and carousing (from Hccles. vil. 11), “That a man hath no 
better thing under the sun than to eat, drink, and be merry:” and 
their gluttony (from Matt. v. 11), “'That which goes into the belly 
defiles not a man.” The Jesuits’ morals are a transcript of this. 
How often hath the Passion of our Saviour, the highest expression 
of God’s holiness, been employed to stain it, and encourage the most 
debauched practices! Grace hath been turned into wantonness, and 
the abundance of grace been used as a blast to increase the flames 
of sin, as if God had no other aim in that work of redemption, but 
to discover himself more indulgent to our sensual appetites, and by 
his severity with his Son, become more gracious to our lusts; this is 
to feed the roots of hell with the dews of heaven, to make grace a 
pander for the abuse of it, and to employ the expressions of his holi- 
ness in his word to be a sword against the essential holiness of his 
nature: as if a man should draw an apology for his treason out of 
that law that was made to forbid, not to protect, his rebellion. Not 
the meanest instrument in the temple was to be alienated from the 
use it was by Divine order appointed to, nor was it to be employed 
in any common use; and shall the word of God, which is the image 
of his holiness, be transferred by base interpretations to be an advo- 
cate for iniquity? Such an ill use of his word reflects upon that 
hand which imprinted those characters of purity and righteousness 
upon it: as the misinterpretation of the wholesome laws of a prince, 
made to discourage debauchery, reflects upon his righteousness and, 
sincerity in enacting them. 

5. The holiness of God is injured, when men will put up petitions 
to God to favor them in a wicked design. Such there are, and taxed 
by the apostle (James iv. 3), ‘‘ Ye ask amiss, that you may consume 
it upon your lusts,” who desired mercies from God, with an intent 
to make them instruments of sin, and weapons of unrighteousness ; 
as it is reported of a thief, that he always prayed for the success of 
his robbery. It hath not been rare in the world to appoint fasts and 
prayers for success in wars manifestly unjust, and commenced upon 
breaches of faith. Many covetous men petition God to prosper them 
in their unjust gain; asif the blessed God sat in his pure majesty 
upon a throne of grace, to espouse unjust practices, and make iniquity 
prosperous. There are such as “ offer sacrifice with an evil mind” 
(Prov. xxi. 27), to barter with God for a divine blessing to spirit a 
wicked contrivance. How great a contempt of the holiness of God 
is this! How inexcusable would it be for a favorite to address him- 


176 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


self to a just prince with this language: Sir, I desire a boon of such 
lands that lie near me, for an addition to my estate, that I may have 
supports for my debauchery, and be able to play the villain more 
powerfully among my neighbors! Hereby he implies that his prince 
is a friend to such crimes and wickedness he intends his petition for 
Is not this the language of many men’s hearts in the immediate pre 
sence of God? The order of prayer runs thus, “ Hallowed be thy 
name ;” first to have a deep sense of the holiness of the Divine na- 
ture, and an ardent desire for the glory of it. This order is inverted 
by asking those things which are not agreeable to the will of God, 
not meet for us to ask, and not meet for God to give; or asking 
things agreeable to the will of God, but with a wicked intention. 
This is, in effect, to desire God to strip himself of his holiness, and 
commit sacrilege upon his own nature to gratify our lusts. 

6. The purity of God is contemned, in hating and scoffing at the 
holiness which is in a creature. Whoever looks upon the holiness 
of a creature as an unlovely thing, can have no good opinion of the 

-amiableness of Divine purity. Whosoever hates those qualities and 
graces that resemble God in any person, must needs contemn the 
original pattern, which is more eminent in God. If there be no 
comeliness in a creature’s holiness, to render it grateful to us, we 
should say of God himself, were he visible among us, with those in 
the prophet (Isa. lii.), “There is no beauty in him, that we should 
desire him.” Holiness is beautiful in itself. If God be the most 
lovely Being, that which is a likeness to him, so far as it doth resem- 
ble him, must needs be amiable, because it partakes of God; and, 
therefore, those that see no beauty in an inferior holiness, but con- 
temn it because it is a purity above them, contemn God much more. 
He that hates that which is imperfect merely for that excellency 
which is in it, doth much more hate that which is perfect, without 
any mixture or stain. Holiness being the glory of God, the peculiar 
title of the Deity, and from him derived unto the nature of a crea- 
ture, he that mocks this in a person, derides God himself; and, when 
he cannot abuse the purity in the Deity, he will do it in his image; 
as rebels that cannot wrong the king in his person, will do it in his 
picture, and his subjects that are loyal to him. He that hates the 
picture of a man, hates the person represented by it much more; he 
that hates the beams, hates the sun; the holiness of a creature is but 
a beam from that infinite Sun, a stream from that eternal Fountain. 
Where there is a derision of the purity of any creature, there is a greater 
reflection upon God in that derision, as he is the Author of it. Ifa 
mixed and stained holiness be more the subject of any man’s scoffs 
than a great deal of sin, that person hath a disposition more roundly 
to scoff at God himself, should he appear in that unblemished and un- 
spotted purity which infinitely shines in his nature. O! it is a dan- 
gerous thing to scoff and deride holiness in any person, though never 
so mean ; such do deride and scoff at the most holy God. 

7. The holiness of God is injured by our unprepared addresses to 
him, when, like swine, we come into the presence of God with all 
our mire reeking and steaming upon us. A holy God requires a 
holy worship; and if our best duties, having filth in every part, as 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 4 177 


performed by us, are unmeet for God, how much more unsuitable 
are dead and dirty duties to a living and immense holiness! Slight 
approaches and drossy frames speak us to have imaginations of God 
as of a slight and sottish being. This is worse than the heathens 
practised, who would purge their flesh before they sacrificed, and 
make some preparations in a seeming purity, before they would enter 
into their temples. God is so holy, that were our services as refined 
as those of angels, we could not present him with a service meet for 
his holy nature (Josh, xxiv.19). We contemn, then, this perfection, 
when we come before him without due preparation; as if God him- 
self were of an impure nature, and did not deserve our purest 
thoughts in our applications to him; as if any blemished and polluted 
sacrifice were good enough for him, and his nature deserved no 
better. When we excite not those elevated frames of spirit which 
are due to such a being, when we think to put him off with a lame 
and imperfect service, we worship him not according to the excel- 
lency of his nature, but put a slight upon his majestic sanctity. 
When we nourish in our duties those foolish imaginations which 
creep upon us; when we bring into, and continue our worldly, car- 
nal, debauched fancies in his presence, worse than the nasty servants, 
or bemired dogs, a man would blush to be attended with in his visits 
to a neat person. ‘To be conversing with sordid sensualities, when 
we are at the feet of an infinite God, sitting upon the throne of his 
holiness, is as much a contempt of him, as it would be of a prince, 
to bring a vessel full of nasty dung with us, when we come to present 
a petition to him in his royal robes; or as it would have been to 
God, if the high priest should have swept all the blood and excre- 
ments of the sacrifices from the foot of the altar into the Holy of 
holies, and heaped it up before the mercy-seat, where the presence 
of God dwelt between the cherubims, and afterwards shovelled it up 
into the ark, to be lodged with Aaron’s rod and the pot of manna. 
8. God’s holiness is slighted in depending upon our imperfect 
services to bear us out before the tribunal of God. This is too or- 
dinary. The Jews were often infected with it (Rom. iii. 10), who, 
not well understanding the enormity of their taansgressions, the 
interweaving of sin with their services, and the unspottedness of the 
Divine purity, mingled an opinion of merit with their sacrifices, 
and thought, by the cutting the throat of a beast, and offering it 
upon God's altar, they had made a sufficient compensation to that 
holiness they had offended. Not to speak of many among the 
Romanists who have the same notion, thinking to make satisfaction 
to God by erecting an hospital, or endowing a church, as if this in- 
‘ured perfection could be contented with the dregs of their purses, 
and the offering of an unjust mammon, more likely to mind God of 
the injury they have done him, than contribute to the appeasing of 
him. But is it not too ordinary with miserable men, whose con- 
Sciences accuse them of their crimes, to rely upon the mumbling of 
a few formal prayers, and in the strength of them, to think to stand 
before the tremendous tribunal of God, and meet with a discharge 
upon this account from any accusation this Divine perfection can 
present against them? Nay, do not the best Christians sometimes 
VOL, 11.—12 


178 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


find a pnnciple in them, that makes them stumble in their goings 
forth to Christ, and glorifying the holiness of God in that method 
which he hath appointed? Sometimes casting an eye at their 
grace, and sticking awhile to this or that duty, and gazing at the 
glory of the temple-building, while they should more admire the 
olorious Presence that fills it. What is all this buta villifying of 
the holiness of the Divine nature, as though it would be well enough 
contented with our impurities and imperfections, because they look 
like a righteousness in our estimation’ As though dross and dung, 
which are the titles the apostles gives to all the righteousness of a 
fallen creature (Phil. iii. 8), were valuable in the sight of God, and 
sufficient to render us comely before him. It is a blasphemy against 
this attribute, to pretend that anything so imperfect, so daubed, as 
the best of our services are, can answer to that which is infinitely 
perfect, and be a ground of demanding eternal life: it is at best, to 
set up a gilded Dagon, as a fit companion for the ark of his Holi- 
ness; our own righteousness as a suitable mate for the righteousness 
- of God: as if he had repented of the claim he made by the law to an 
exact conformity, and thrown off the holiness of his nature for the 
fondling of a corrupted creature. Rude and foolish notions of the 
Divine purity are clearly evidenced by any confidence in any right- 
eousness of our own, though never so splendid. It is a rendering 
the righteousness of God as dull and obscure as that of men; a 
mere outside, as their own; as blind as the heathens pictured their 
Fortune, that knew as little how to discern the nature and value of 
the offerings made to her, as to distribute her gifts, as if it were all 
one to them, to have a dog or a lamb presented in sacrifice. As if 
God did not well understand his own nature, when he enacted so 
holy a law, and strengthened it with so severe a threatening ; which 
must follow upon our conceit, that he will accept a righteousness 
lower than that which bears some suitableness to the holiness of his 
own nature, and that of his law; and that he could easily be put off 
with a pretended and counterfeit service. What are the services of 
the generality of men, but suppositions, that they can bribe God to 
an indulgence of them in their sins, and by an oral sacrifice, cause 
him to divest himself of his hatred of their former iniquities, and 
countenance their following practises. As the harlot, that would 
return fresh to her uncleanness, upon the confidence that her peace 
offering had contented the righteousness of God (Prov. vu. eer as 
though a small service could make him wimk at our sins, and lay 
aside the glory of his nature; when, alas! the best duties in the 
most gracious persons in this life, are but as the steams of a spiced 
dung-hill, a composition of myrrh and froth, since there are swarms 
of corruptions in their nature, and secret sins that they need a 
cleansing from. 

9. It is a contemning the holiness of God, when we charge the 
law of God with rigidness. We cast dirt upon the holiness of God 
when we blame the law of God, because it shackles us, and pro 
hibit our desired pleasures; and hate the law of God, as they did 
the prophets, because they did not prophesy smooth things; but 
called to them, to “ get” them “out of the way, and turn aside out 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GoD. 179 


of the path, and cause the Holy One of Israel to cease from before 
them” (Isa. xxx. 10, 11). Put us no more in mind of the holiness 
of God, and the holiness of his law; it is a troublesome thing for 
us to hear of it: let him be gone from us, since he will not 
countenance our vices, and indulge our crimes; we would rather 
hear there is a God, than you would tell us of a holy one. We are 
contrary to the law, when we wish it were not so exact; and, there- 
fore, contrary to the holiness of God, which set the stamp of exact- 
ness and righteousness upon it. We think him injurious to our 
liberty, when, by his precept he thwarts our pleasure; we wish 
it of another frame, more mild, more suitable to our minds: it 
is the same, as if we should openly blame God for consulting with 
his own righteousness, and not with our humors, before he set- 
tled his law; that he should not have drawn from the depths of his 
righteous nature, but squared it to accommodate our corruption. 
This being the language of such complaints, is a reproving God, be- 
cause he would not be unholy, that we might be unrighteous with 
unpunity. Had the Divine law been suited to our corrupt state, 
God must have been unholy to have complied with his rebellious 
creature. T’o charge the law with rigidness, either in language or 
practice, is the highest contempt of God’s holiness; for it is an im- 
plicit wish, that God were as defiled, polluted, disorderly, as our 
corrupted selves. 

10. The holiness of God is injured opinionatively. (1). In the 
opinion of venial sins. The Romanists divide sins into venial and 
mortal: mortal, are those which deserve eternal death; venial, the 
lighter sort of sins, which rather deserve to be pardoned than pun- 
ished; or if punished, not with an eternal, but temporal punish- 
ment. This opinion hath no foundation in, but is contrary to, Scrip- 
ture. How can any sin be in its own nature venial, when the due 
“wages of every sin is death” (Rom. vi. 23)? and he who “con- 
tinues not in every thing that the law commands,” falls under a 
“curse” (Gal. 1.10). It is a mean thought of the holiness and ma- 
jesty of God to imagine, that any sin which is against an infinite 
majesty, and as infinite a purity both in the nature of God and the 
law of God, should not be considered as infinitely heinous. All 
sins are transgressions of the eternal law, and in every one the in- 
finite holiness of God is some way slighted. (2). In the opinion of 
works of supererogation. Thatis,such works as are not commanded 
by God, which yet have such a dignity and worth in their own 
nature, that the performers of them do not only merit at God’s hands 
for themselves, but fill up a treasure of merits for others, that come 
short of fulfilling the precepts God hath enjoined. It is such a mean 
thought of God’s holiness, that the Jews, in all the charges brought 
against them in Scripture, were never guilty of. And if you con- 
sider what pitiful things they are, which are within the compass of 
such works, you have sufficient reason to bewail the ignorance of 
man, and the low esteem he hath of so glorious a perfection. The 
whipping themselves often in a week, extraordinary watchings, fast- 
ings, macerating their bodies, wearing a capuchin’s habit, &c. are 
pitiful things to give content to an Infinite Purity. As if the pre- 


180 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


cept of God required only the inferior degrees of virtue, and the 
counsels the more high and excellent; as if the law of God, which 
the Psalmist counts “perfect” (Ps. xix.7), did not command all good, 
and forbid all evil; as if the holiness of God had forgotten itself in 
the framing the law, and made it a scanty and defective rule; and 
the righteousness of a creature were not only able to make an eternal 
righteousness, but surmount it. As man would be at first as know- 
ing as God, so some of his posterity would be more holy than God ; 
set up a wisdom against the wisdom of God, and a purity above the 
Divine purity. Adam was not so presumptuous, he intended no 
more than an equalling God in knowledge; but those would exceed 
him in righteousness, and not only presume to render a satisfaction. 
for themselves to the holiness they have injured, but to make a 
purse for the supply of others that are indigent, that they may stand 
before the tribunal of God with a confidence in the imaginary right- 
eousness of a creature. How horrible is it for those that come 
short of the law of God themselves, to think that they can have 
enough for a loan to their neighbors! An unworthy opinion. 
Inform. 2. Tt may inform us, how great is our fall from God, and 
how distant we are from him. View the holiness of God, and take 
a prospect of the nature of man, and be astonished to see a person 
created in the Divine image, degenerated into the image of the devil. 
We are as far fallen from the holiness of God, which consists in a 
hatred of sin, as the lowest point of the earth is from the highest 
point of the heavens. The devil is not more fallen from the rectitude 
of his nature and likeness to God, than we are; and that we are not 
in the same condition with those apostate spirits, is not from any- 
thing in our nature, but from the mediation of Christ, upon which 
account God hath indulged in us a continuance of some remainders 
of that which Satan is wholly deprived of. We are departed from 
our original pattern; we were created to live the “life of God,” that 
that is, a life of “holiness;” but now we are “alienated from the 
life of God” (Eph. iv. 18), and of a beautiful piece we are become 
deformed, daubed over with the most defiling mud: we ‘‘ work un- 
cleanness with greediness,” according to our ability, as creatures; as 
God doth work “holiness” with affection and ardency, according to 
his infiniteness, as Creator. More distant we are from God by reason 
of sin, than the vilest creature, the most deformed toad, or poisonous 
serpent, is from the highest and most glorious angel. By forsaking 
our innocence, we departed from God as our original copy. The 
apostle might well say (Rom. iii. 23), that by sin “we are come short 
of the glory of God.” Interpreters trouble themselves much about 
that place, ‘Man is come short of the glory of God,” that is, of the 
holiness of God, which is the glory of the Divine nature, and was 
pictured in the rational, innocent creature. By the “glory of God,” 
is meant the holiness of God; (as 1 Cor. iii, 18), “ Beholding, as in a 
glass, the glory of the Lord, we are changed into the same image 
from glory to glory -” that is the glory of God in the text, into the 
image of which we are changed ; but the Scripture speaks of no other 
image of God, but that of holiness; “we are come short of the glory 
of God;” of the holiness of God, which is the glory of God; and 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 181i 


the image of it, which was the glory of man. By sin, which is par- 
ticular in opposition to the purity of God, man was left many leagues 
behind any resemblance to God; he stripped off that which was the 
glory of his nature, and was the only means of glorifying God as 
his Creator. The word soregovvre, the apostle uses, is very signifi- 
cant,—postponed by sin an infinite distance from any imitation of 
God’s holiness, or any appearance before him in a garb of nature 
pleasing to him. Let us lament our fall and distance from God. 

Inform. 3. All unholinesss is vile, and opposite to the nature of 
God. It is such a loathsome thing, that the “ purity of God’s eye is 
averse from beholding” (Hab. i. 3). It is not said there, that he will 
not, but he cannot, look on evil; there cannot be any amicableness 
between God and sin, the natures of both are so directly and un- 
changeably contrary to one another. Holiness is the life of God; it 
endures as long as his life; he must be eternally averse from sin, he 
can live no longer than he lives in the hatred and loathing of it. If 
he should for one instant cease to hate it, he would cease to live. To 
be a holy God, is as essential to him, as to be a living God; and he 
would not be a living God, but a dead God, if he were in the least 
point of time an unholy God. He cannot look on sin without loath- 
mg it; he cannot look on sin but his heart riseth against it; it must 
needs be most odious to him, as that which is against the glory of 
his nature, and directly opposite to that which is the lustre and var- 
nish of all his other perfections. It is the “ abominable thing which 
his soul hates” (Jer. xliv. 4); the vilest terms imaginable are used to 
signify it. Do you understand the loathsomeness of a miry swine, 
or the nauseousness of the vomit of a dog? these are emblems of 
sin (2 Peter ii. 22). Can youendure the steams of putrefied carcasses 
from an open sepulchre (Rom. iii. 23)? is the smell of the stinking 
sweat or excrements of a body delightful? the word ¢vzagia in James 
i. 21, signifies as much. Or is the sight of a body overgrown with 
scabs and leprosy grateful to you? So vile, so odious is sin, in the 
sight of God. It is no light thing, then, to fly in the face of God; 
to break his eternal law; to dash both the tables in pieces: to tram- 
ple the transcript of God’s own nature under our feet; to cherish 
that which was inconsistent with his honor; to lift up our heels 
against the glory of his nature; to join issue with the devil in stab- 
bing his heart, and depriving him of his life. Sin, in every part of 
it, is an opposition to the holiness of God, and consequently an envy- 
ing him a being and life, as well as a glory. If sin be such a thing, 
“ye that love the Lord, hate evil.” 

Inform. 4. Sin cannot escape a due punishment. A hatred of un- 
righteousness, and consequently a will to punish it, is as essential to 
God as a love of righteousness. Since he is not as an heathen idol, 
but hath eyes to see, and purity to hate every iniquity, he will have 
an infinite justice to punish whatsoever is against infinite holiness. 
As he loves everything that is amiable, so he loathes everything that 
is filthy, and that constantly, without any change; his whole nature 
is Set against it; he abhors nothing but this. It is not the devil’s 
knowledge or activity that his hatred is terminated in, but the malice 
and unholiness of his nature; it is this only is the object of his se- 


182 . CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


verity ; it is in the recompense of this only that there can be a man- 
ifestation of his justice. Sin must be punished; for, 

1. This detestation of sin must be manifested. How should we 
certainly know his loathing of it, if he did not manifest, by some act, 
how ungrateful itis to him? As his love to righteousness would 
not appear, without rewarding it; so his hatred of iniquity would be 
as little evidenced, without punishing it; his justice is the great 
witness to his purity. The punishment, therefore, inflicted on the 
wicked, shall be, in some respect, as great as the rewards bestowed 
upon the righteous. Since the hatred of sin is natural to God, it 
is as natural to him to show, one time or other, his hatred of it. 
And since men have a conceit that God is like them in impurity, there 
is a necessity of some manifestation of himself to be infinitely distant 
from those conceits they have of him (Ps. 1. 21); “I will reprove 
thee, and set them in order before thine eyes.” He would else en- 
courage the injuries done to his holiness, favor the extravagances of 
the creature, and condemn, or at least slight, the righteousness both 
_ of his own nature, and his sovereign law. What way is there for 
God to manifest his hatred, but by threatening the sinner? and what 
would this be but a vain affrightment, and ridiculous to the sinner, 
if it were never to be put in execution? ‘There is an indissoluble 
connection between his hatred of sin, and punishment of the offender 
(Ps. x1. 5, 6); “The wicked, his soul hates. Upon the wicked he shall 
rain snares, fire, and brimstone,” &. He cannot approve of it without 
denying himself; and a total impunity would be a degree of appro- 
bation. ‘The displeasure of God 1s eternal and irreconcileable against 
sin; for sin being absolutely contrary to his holy nature, he is eter- 
nally contrary to it; if there be not, therefore, a way to separate the 
sin from the sinner, the sinner must lie under the displeasure of God; 
no displeasure can be manifested without some marks of it upon the 
person that lies under that displeasure. The holiness of God will 
right itself of the wrongs done to it, and scatter the profaners of it 
at the greatest distance from him, which is the greatest punishment 
that can be inflicted; to be removed far from the Fountain of Life is 
the worst of deaths; God can as soon lay aside his purity, as always 
forbear his displeasure against an impure person; it is all one not to 
hate it, and not to manifest his hatred of it. 

2. As his holiness is natural and necessary, so is the punishment of 
unholiness necessary to him. It is necessary that he should abomi- 
nate sin, and therefore necessary he should discountenance it. The 
severities of God against sin are not vain scare-crows; they have 
their foundation in the righteousness of his nature; it is because he 
is a righteous and holy God, that he “ will not forgive our transgres- 
sions and sins’ (Josh. xxiy. 19), that is, that he will punish them. 
The throne of his “holiness is a fiery flame” (Dan. vii. 9); there is 
both a pure light and a scorching heat. Whatsoever is contrary to 
the nature of God, will fall under the justice of God; he would else 
violate his own nature, deny his own perfection, seem to be out of 
love with his own glory and life. He doth not hate it out of choice, 
but from the immutable propension of his nature; it is not so free 
an act of his will, as the creation of man and angels, which he might 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 183 


have forborne as well as effected. As the detestation of sin results 
from the universal rectitude of his nature, so the punishment of sin 
follows upon that, as he is the righteous Governor of the world: it 
is as much against his nature not to punish it, as it is against his na- 
ture not to loathe it; he would cease to be holy if he ceased to hate 
it, and he would cease to hate it if he ceased to punish it. Neither 
the obedience of our Saviour’s life, nor the strength of his cries, 
could put a bar to the cup of his passion; God so hated sin, that 
when it was but imputed to his Son, without any commission of it, 
he would bring a hell upon his soul. Certainly if God could have 
hated sin without punishing it, his Son had never felt the smart of 
his wrath; his love to his Son had been strong enough to have caused 
him to forbear, had not the holiness of his nature been stronger to 
move him to inflict a punishment according to the demerit of his 
sin. God cannot but be holy, and therefore cannot but be just, be- 
cause injustice is a part of unholiness. 

3. Therefore there can be no communion between God and un- 
holy spirits. How is it conceivable, that God should hate the sin, 
and cherish the sinner, with all his filth in his bosom? that he 
should eternally detest the crime, and eternally fold the sinner in 
his arms? Can less be expected from the purity of his nature, than 
to separate an impure soul, as long as it remains so? Can there be 
any delightful communion between those whose natures are contrary ? 
Darkness and light may as soon kiss each other, and become one 
nature: God and the devil may as soon enter into an eternal league 
and covenant together. For God to have pleasure in wickedness, 
and to admit evil to dwell with him, are equally impossible to his 
nature (Ps. v. 4): while he hates impurity, he cannot have com- 
munion with an impure person. It may as soon be expected, that 
God should hate himself, offer violence to his own nature, lay aside 
his purity as an abominable thing, and blot his own glory, as love 
an impure person, entertain him as his delight, and set him in the 
same heaven and happiness with himself, and his holy angels. He 
must needs loathe him, he must needs banish him from his presence, 
which is the greatest punishment. God’s holiness and hatred of sin 
necessarily infer the punishment of it. 

Inform. 5. There is, therefore, a necessity of the satisfaction of the 
holiness of God by some sufficient mediator. The Divine purity 
could not meet with any acquiescence in all mankind after the fall: 
sin was hated; the simner would be ruined, unless some way were 
found out to repair the wrongs done to the holiness of God; either 
the sinner must be condemned for ever, or some satisfaction must be 
made, that the holiness of the Divine nature might eternally appear 
in its full lustre. That it is essential to the nature of God to hate all 
unrighteousness, as that which is absolutely repugnant to his nature, 
none do question. That the justice of God is so essential to him, as 
that sin could not be pardoned without satisfaction, some do ques- 
tion ; though this latter seems rationally to follow upon the former.y 
That holiness is essential to the nature of God, is evident; because, 
else, God may as much be conceived without purity, as he might be 

¥ Turretin. de Satisfac. p. 8. 


184. CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


conceived without the creating the sun or stars. No man can, in 
his right wits, frame a right notion of a Deity without purity. It 
would be less blasphemy against the excellency of God, to conceit 
him not knowing, than to imagine him not holy : and, for the essen- 
tialness of his justice, Joshua joins both his holiness and his jealousy 
as going hand in hand together (Josh. xxiv. 19); “ He is a holy 
God, he is a jealous God, he will not forgive your sin.” But con- 
sider only the purity of God, since it is contrary to sin, and, conse- 
quently, hating the sinner; the guilty person cannot be reduced to 
God, nor can the holiness of God have any complacency in a filthy 
person, but as fire hath in stubble, to consume it. How the holy 
God should be brought to delight in man without a salvo for the 
rights of his holiness, is not to be conceived without an impeach- 
ment of the nature of God. The law could not be abolished; that 
would reflect, indeed, upon the righteousness of the Lawgiver: to 
abolish it, because of sin, would imply a change of the rectitude of 
his nature. Must he change his holiness for the sake of that which 
was against his holiness, in a compliance with a profane and un- 
righteous creature? This should engage him rather to maintain his 
law, than to null it; and to abrogate his law as soon as he had en- 
acted it, since sin stepped into the world presently after it, would be 
no credit to his wisdom. ‘There must be a reparation made of the 
honor of God’s holiness; by ourselves it could not be without con- 
demnation; by another it could not be without a sufficiency in the 
person: no creature could do it. All the creatures being of a finite 
nature, could not make a compensation for the disparagements of 
Infinite Holiness. He must have despicable and vile thoughts of this 
excellent perfection, that imagines that a few tears, and the glaver- 
ing fawnings at the death of a creature, can be sufficient to repair 
the wrongs, and restore the rights of this attribute. It must, therefore, 
be such a compensation as might be commensurate to the holiness of 
the Divine nature and the Divine law, which could not be wrought 
by any, but Him that was possessed of a Godhead to give efficacy 
and exact congruity to it. The Person designed and appointed by 
God for so great an affair, was ‘one in the form of God, one equal 
with God,” (Phil. 11. 6), who could not be termed by such atitle of 
dignity, if he had not been equal to God in the universal rectitude 
of the Divine nature, and therefore in his holiness. The punishment 
due to sin is translated to that person for the righting Divine holi- 
ness, and the righteousness of that Person is communicated to the 
sinner for the pardon of the offending creature. If the sinner had 
been eternally damned, God’s hatred of sin had been evidenced by 
the strokes of his justice; but his mercy to a sinner had lain in ob- 
scurity. Ifthe sinner had been pardoned and saved without such a 
reparation, mercy had been evident; but his holiness had hid its 
head for ever in his own bosom. There was therefore a necessity of 
such a way to manifest his purity, and yet to bring forth his mercy : 
that mercy might not alway sigh for the destruction of the creature, 
and that holiness might not mourn for the neglect of its honor. 
Inform. 6. Hence it will follow, there is no justification of a sin- 
ner by any thing in himself. After sin had set foot in the world, 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 185 


man could present nothing to God acceptable to him, or bearing any 
proportion to the holiness of his law, till God set forth a Person, 
upon whose account the acceptation of our persons and services is 
founded (Eph. 1. 6), “ Who hath made us accepted in the Beloved.” 
The Infinite purity of God is so glorious, that 1t shames the holiness 
of angels, as the hght of the sun dims the light of the fire; much 
more will the righteousness of fallen man, who is vile, and “ drinks 
up iniquity like water,” vanish into nothing in his presence. With 
what self-abasement and abhorrence ought he to be possessed that 
comes as short of the angels in purity, as a dunghill doth of a star! 
The highest obedience that ever was performed by any mere man, 
since lapsed nature, cannot challenge any acceptance with God, or 
stand before so exact an inquisition. What person hath such a clear 
imnocence, and unspotted obedience in such a perfection, as in any 
degree to suit the holiness of the Divine nature ? (Ps. exliii.2): ‘‘ Enter 
not into judgment with thy servant, for in thy sight shall no man 
living be justified.” If God should debate the case simply with a 
man in his own person, without respecting the Mediator, he were 
not able to “ answer one of a thousand.” ‘Though we are his ser- 
vants, as David was, and Figo a sincere service, yet there are 
many little motes and dust of‘sin in the best works, that cannot lie 
undiscovered from the eye of his holiness; and if we come short in 
the least of what the law requires, we are “ guilty of all” (James ii. 
10). So that “In thy sight shall no man living be justified;” in 
the sight of thy infinite holiness, which hates the least spot; in the 
sight of thy infinite justice, which punishes the least transgres- 
sion. God would descend below his own nature, and vilify both 
his knowledge and his purity, should he accept that for a righteous- 
ness and holiness which is not so in itself; and nothing is so, which 
hath the least stain upon it contrary to the nature of God. The 
most holy saints in Scripture, upon a prospect of his purity, have 
cast away all confidence in themselves; every flash of the Divine 
purity has struck them into a deep sense of their own impurity and 
shame for it (Job xlii. 6), ‘‘ Wherefore I abhor myself in dust and 
ashes.” What can the language of any man be that lies under a 
sense of infinite holiness and his own defilement in the least, but 
that of the prophet (Isa. vi. v), ‘‘ Woe is me, lam undone?” And 
what is there in the world can administer any other thought than 
this, unless God be considered in Christ, “reconciling the world to 
himself?” As a holy God, so righted, as that he can dispense with 
the condemnation of a sinner, without dispensing with his hatred of 
sin ; pardoning the sin in the criminal, because it hath been punish- 
ed in the Surety. That righteousness which God hath “set forth” 
for justification, is not our own, but a “righteousness which is of 
God” (Phil. i. 9, 10), of God’s appointing, and of God’s per- 
forming ; appointed by the Father, who is God, and performed by the 
Son, who is one with the Father; a righteousness surmounting that 
of all the glorious angels, since it is an immutable one which can 
never fail, an “everlasting righteousness” (Dan. ix. 24); a righteous- 
ness wherein the holiness of God can acquiesce, as considered in it- 
self, because it is a righteousness of one equal with God. As we 


186 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


therefore dishonor the Divine Majesty when we insist upon our own 
bemired righteousness for our justification (as if a ‘a mortal man 
were as just as God,” and a “man as pure as his Maker” (Job iv. 
17), so we highly honor the purity of his nature, when we charge 
ourselves with folly, acknowledge ourselves unclean, and accept 
of that righteousness which gives a full content to his infinite 
purity. There can be no justification of a sinner by anything in 
himself. 

Inform. 7. If holiness be a glorious perfection of the Divine na- 
ture, then the Deity of Christ might be argued from hence. He is 
indeed dignified with the title of the ‘‘ Holy One” (Acts ii. 14, 16), 
a title often given to God in the Old Testament; and he is called 
the “ Holy of holies” (Dan. ix. 24); but because the angels seemed 
to be termed ‘“ Holy ones” (Dan. iv. 18, 17), and the most sacred 
place in the temple was also called the “Holy of holies,” I shall not 
insist upon that. But you find our Saviour particularly applauded 
by the angels, as “ holy,” when this perfection of the Divine nature, 
- together with the incommunicable name of God, are linked together, 
and ascribed to him (Isa. vi. 3): “ Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of 
Hosts; and the whole earth is full of his glory ;” which the apostle 
interprets of “Christ” (John xu. 89, 41). Isaiah, again: “ He hath 
blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts, that they should not 
see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, and be con- 
verted, and I should heal them.” These things said Isaiah, when he 
saw his glory, and spake of him. He that Isaiah saw environed 
with the seraphims, in a reverential posture before his face, and 
praised as most holy by them, was the true and eternal God; such 
acclamations belong to none but the great Jehovah, God, blessed 
forever; but, saith John, it was the “glory of Christ” that Isaiah 
saw in this vision; Christ, therefore, is ‘God blessed forever,” of 
whom it was said, ‘‘ Holy, holy, holy Lord of Hosts.” The evan- 
gelist had been speaking of Christ, the miracles which he wrought, 
the obstinacy of the Jews against believing on him; his glory, there- 
fore, is to be referred to the subject he had been speaking of. The 
evangelist was not speaking of the Father, but of the Son, and cites 
those words out of Isaiah; not to teach anything of the Father, but 
to show that the Jews could not believe in Christ. He speaks of 
him that had wrought so many miracles; but Christ wrought those 
miracles: he speaks of him whom the Jews refused to believe on ; 
but Christ was the person they would not believe on, while they ac- 
knowledged God. It was the glory of this person Isaiah saw, and 
this person Isaiah spake of, if the words of the evangelist be of any 
credit. The angels are too holy to give acclamations belonging to 
God, to any but him that is God. 

Inform. 8. God is fully fit for the government of the world. The 
righteousness of God’s nature qualifies him to be J udge of the world ; 
if he were not perfectly righteous and holy, he were incapable to 
govern and judge the world (Rom. iii. 5): ‘If there be unrighteous- 
ness with God, how shall he judge the world?” ‘God will not do 
wickedly, neither will the Almighty pervert judgment” (Job xxxiv. 


z Placeus, de Deitat. Christi, in loc. r 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GoD. 187 


12). How despicable is a judge that wants innocence! As omni- 
science fits God to be a judge, so holiness fits him to be a righteous 
judge (Ps. i. 6): “The Lord knows,” that is, loves, “the way of the 
righteous ; but the way of the ungodly shall perish.” 

Inform. 9. If holiness be an eminent perfection of the Divine na- 
ture, the Christian religion is of a Divine extraction: it discovers 
the holiness of God, and forms the creature to a conformity to him. 
It gives us a prospect of his nature, represents him in the “ beauty of 
holiness” (Ps. cx. 8), more than the whole glass of the creation, It 
is in this evangelical glass the glory of the Lord is beheld, and ren- 
dered amiable and imitable (2 Cor. iii. 18). It isa doctrine “ accord- 
ing to godliness” (1 Tim. vi. 3), directing us to live the life of God ; 
a life worthy of God, and worthy of our first creation by his hand. 
It takes us off from ourselves, fixeth us upon a noble end, points 
our actions, and the scope of our lives to God. It quells the mon- 
sters of sin, discountenanceth the motes of wickedness ; and it is no 
mean argument for the divinity of it, that it sets us no lower a pat- 
tern for our imitation, than the holiness of the Divine Majesty. 
God is exalted upon the throne of his holiness in it, and the creature 
advanced to an image and resemblance of it (1 Pet. i. 16): “ Be ye 
holy, for I am holy.” 

Use2. The second use is for comfort. This attribute frowns upon 
lapsed nature, but smiles in the restorations made by the gospel. 
God’s holiness, in conjunction with his justice, is terrible to a guilty 
sinner; but now, in conjunction with his mercy, by the satisfaction 
of Christ, it is sweet to a believing penitent. In the “ first cove- 
nant,” the purity of his nature was joined with the rigors of his jus- 
tice; in the “second covenant,” the purity of his nature is joined 
with the sweetness and tenderness of his mercy. In the one, justice 
flames against the sinner in the right of injured holiness; in the 
other, merey yearns towards a believer, with the consent of righted 
holiness. 'T'o rejoice in the holiness of God is the true and genuine 
spirit of a renewed man: “My heart rejoiceth in the Lord ;’—what 
follows ?—“ There is none holy as the Lord” (1 Sam. ii. 1, 2). Some 
perfections of the Divine nature are astonishing, some affrighting ; 
but this may fill us both with astonishment at it, and a joy in it. 

1. By covenant, we have an interest in this attribute, as well as 
any other. In that clause of “God's being our God,” entire God 
with all his glory, all his perfections are passed over as a portion, 
and a gracious soul is brought into union with God, as his God; not 
with a part of God, but with God in the simplicity, extent, integrity 
_ of his nature; and therefore in this attribute. And, upon some ac- 
count, 1t may seem more in this attribute than in any other; for if 
he be our God, he is our God in his life and glory, and therefore in 
his purity especially, without which he could not live ; he could not 
be happy and blessed. Little comfort will it be to have a dead God, 
or a vile God, made over to us; and as, by this covenant, he is our 
Father, so he gives us his nature, and communicates his holiness in 
all his dispensations; and in those that are severest, as well as those 
that are sweetest (Heb. xii. 10): “But he corrects us for our profit, 
that we might be partakers of his holiness.” Not simply “ partak- 


188 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


ers of holiness,” but of “his holiness ;” to have a portraiture of it in 
our nature, a medal of it in our hearts, a spark of the same nature 
with that immense splendor and flame in himself. ‘The holiness of 
a covenant soul is a resemblance of the holiness of God, and formed 
by it; asthe picture of the sun in a cloud is a fruit of his beams, 
and an image of its author. The fulness of the perfection of holi- 
ness remains in the nature of God, as the fulness of the light doth 
in the sun; yet there are transmissions of light from the sun to the 
moon, and it is a light of the same nature both in the one and in the 
other. The holiness of a creature is nothing else but a reflection of 
the Divine holiness upon it; and to make the creature capable of it, 
God takes various methods, according to his covenant grace. 

2. This attribute renders God a fit object for trust and dependence. 
The notion of an unholy and unrighteous God, is an uncomfortable 
idea of him, and beats off our hands from laying any hold of him. 
It is upon this attribute the reputation and honor of God in the 
world is built; what encouragement can we have to believe him, or 
what incentives could we have to serve him, without the lustre of 
this in his nature? The very thought of an unrighteous God is 
enough to drive men at the greatest distance from him ; as the hon- 
esty of a man gives a reputation to his word, so doth the holiness of 
God give credit to his promise. It is by this he would have us stifle 
our fears and fortify our trust (Isa. xli..14): “ Fea? not, thou worm 
Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the Lord, and 
thy Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel :” he will be in his actions 
what he is in his nature. Nothing shall make him defile his own 
excellency ; unrighteousness is the ground of mutability ; but the 
promise of God doth never fail, because the rectitude of his nature 
doth never languish: were his attributes without the conduct of 
this, they would be altogether formidable. As this is the glory of 
all his other perfections, so this only renders him comfortable to a be- 
lieving soul. Might we not fear his power to crush us, his mercy to 
overlook us, his wisdom to design against us, if this did not influ- 
ence them? What an oppression is power without righteousness in 
the hand of a creature; destructive, instead of protecting! The 
devil is a mighty spirit, but not fit to be trusted, because he 1s an 1m- 
pure spirit. When God would give us the highest security of the 
sincerity of his intentions, he swears by this attribute (Ps. vii. 35): 
his holiness, as well as his truth, is laid to pawn for the security of 
his promise. As we make God the judge between us and others, 
when we swear by him, so he makes his holiness the judge between 
himself and his people, when he swears by it. 

(1.) It is this renders him fit to be confided in for the answer of 
our prayers. ‘This is the ground of his readiness to give. “ If you, 
being evil, know how to give good gifts, how much more shall your 
Father which is in heaven give good gifts to them that ask him” 
(Matt. vii.11)! Though the holiness of God be not mentioned, yet it 
is to be understood; the emphasis lies on these words, “if you, being 
evil :” God is then considered in a disposition contrary to this, which 
can be nothing but his righteousness. If you that are unholy, and 
have so much corruption in you, to render you cruel, can bestow 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 189 


upon your children the good things they want, how much more shall 
God, who is holy, and hath nothing in him to check his mercifulness 
to his creatures, grant the petitions of his supplicants! It was this 
attribute edged the fiduciary importunity of the souls under the 
altar, for the revenging their blood unjustly shed upon the earth: 
“How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not avenge our blood 
on them that dwell on the earth” (Rev. vi. 10)? Let not thy holi- 
ness stand with folded arms, as careless of the eminent sufferings of 
those that fear thee; we implore thee by the holiness of thy nature, 
and the truth of thy word. 

(2.) This renders him fit to be confided in for the comfort of our 
souls in a broken condition. ‘The reviving the hearts of the spirit- 
ually afflicted, is a part of the holiness of his nature; ‘ Thus saith 
the high and lofty One that inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy; 
I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a con- 
trite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble” (Isa. lvii. 
15). He acknowledgeth himself the lofty One; they might there- 
fore fear he would not revive them; but he is also the holy One, 
and therefore he will refresh them ; he is not more lofty than he is 
holy ; besides, the argument of the immutability of his promise, and 
the might of his power, here is the holiness of his nature moving 
him to pity his drooping creature: his promise is ushered in with 
the name of power, “ high and lofty One,” to bar their distrust of 
his strength, and with a declaration of his holiness, to check an 
despair of his will: there is no ground to think I should be false to 
my word, or misemploy my power, since that cannot be, because of 
the holiness of my name and nature. 

(3.) This renders him fit to be confided in for the maintenance of 
grace, and protection of us against our spiritual enemies. What our 
Saviour thought an argument in prayer, we may well take as a 
ground of our confidence. In the strength of this he puts up-his 
suit, when in his mediatory capacity he intercedes for the preserva- 
tion of his people (John xvu. 11); “Holy Father, keep through 
thy own name those that thou hast given me, that they may be one 
as we are.” “ Holy Father,” not merciful Father, or powerful, or 
wise Father, but “holy ;” and (ver. 25), “righteous Father.” Christ 
pens that attribute for the performance of God’s word, which was 
aid to pawn when he passed his word: for it was by his holiness 
that he swore, that “ his seed should endure forever, and his throne 
as the sun before him” (Ps. lxxxix. 86); which is meant of the per- 
petuity of the covenant which he made with Christ, and is also 
meant of the preservation of the mystical seed of David, and the 
perpetuating his loving-kindness to them (ver. 32, 83). Grace is an 
image of God’s holiness, and, therefore, the holiness of God is most 
proper to be used as an argument to interest and engage him in the 
preservation of it. In the midst of church-provocations, he will 
not utterly extinguish, because he is the ‘“ Holy One” in the midst 
of her (Hos. xi. 9): nor in the midst of judgments will he condemn 
his people to death, because he is “their Holy One” (Hab. i. 12); but 
their enemies shall be ordained for judgment, and established for 
correction. One prophet assures them in the name of the Lord, 


190 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


upon the strength of this perfection ; and the other, upon the same 
ground, is confident of the protection of the church, because of 
God’s holiness engaged in an inviolable covenant. 

3. Comfort. Since holiness is a glorious perfection of the nature 
of God, “he will certainly value every holy soul.” It is of a 
greater value with him than the souls of all men in the world, that 
are destitute of it: “wicked men are the worst of vilenesses,” mere 
dross and dunghill.e Purity, then, which is contrary to wickedness, 
must be the most precious thing in his esteem; he must needs love 
that quality which he is most pleased with in himself, as a father 
looks with most delight upon the child which is possessed with those 
dispositions he most values in his own nature. “ His countenance 
doth behold the upright” (Ps. xi. 7). He looks upon them with a 
full and open face of favor, with a countenance clear, unmasked, and 
smiling with a face full of delight. Heaven itself is not such a 
pleasing object to him as the image of his own uncreated holiness in 
the created holiness of men and angels: as a man esteems that most 
which is most like him, of his own generation, more than a piece of 
art, which is merely the product of his wit or strength. And he 
must love holiness in the creature, he would not else love his own 
image, and, consequently, would undervalue himself. He despiseth 
the image the wicked bears (Ps. xxiii. 20), but he cannot disesteem 
his own stamp on the godly; he cannot but delight in his own 
work, his choice work, the master-piece of all his works, the new 
creation of things; that which is next to himself, as being a Divine 
nature like himself (2 Pet. i. 4). When he overlooks strength, parts, 
knowledge, he cannot overlook this: he “sets apart him that is 
godly for himself” (Ps. iv. 8), as a peculiar object to take pleasure 
in; he reserves such for his own complaceny, when he leaves the 
rest of the world to the devil’s power; he is choice of them above 
all his other works, and will not let any have so great a propriety in 
them as himself. If it be so dear to him here in its imperfect and 
mixed condition, that he appropriates it as a peculiar object for his 
own delight, how much more will the unspotted purity of glorified 
saints be infinitely pleasing to him! so, that he will take less plea- 
sure in the material heavens than in such a soul. Sin only is detest- 
able to God; and when this is done away, the soul becomes as lovely 
in his account, as before it was loathsome. 

4. It is comfort, upon this account, that “God will perfect hol- 
ness in every upright soul.” We many times distrust God, and de- 
spond in ourselves, because of the infinite holiness of the Divine na- 
ture, and the dunghill corruption in our own; but the holiness of 
God engageth him to the preservation of it, and, consequently, to 
the perfection of it, as appears by our Saviour’s aroument (John 
xvi. 11), “ Holy Father, keep through thy own name, those whom 
thou hast given me ;”—to what end?—“ that they may be one as we 
are;” one with us, in the resemblances of purity. And the holi- 
ness of the soul is used as an argument by the Psalmist (Ps. lxxxvi. 
2), “ Preserve my soul, for I am holy ;” that is, I have an ardent de- 
sire to holiness: thou hast separated me from the mags of the cor 

@ Ps. xii. 8. The vilest men. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 191 


rupted world, preserve and perfect me with the assembly of the 
glorified choir. The more holy any are, the more communicative 
they are; God being most holy, is most communicative of that 
which he most esteems in himself, and delights to see in his crea- 
ture: he is, therefore, more ready to impart his holiness to them that 
beg for it, than to communicate his knowledge or his power. 
Though he were holy, yet he let Adam fall, who never petitioned 
his holiness to preserve him; he let him fall, to declare the holiness 
of his own nature, which had wanted its due manifestation without 
it: but since that cannot be declared in a higher manner than it 
hath been already in the death of the Surety, that bore our guilt, 
there is no fear he should cast the work out of his hands, since the 
design of the permission of man’s apostasy, in the discovery of the 
perfections of his nature, has been fully answered. The “finishing 
the good work he hath begun,” hath a relation to the glory of 
Christ; and his own glory in Christ to be manifested in the day of 
his appearing (Phil. i. 6), wherein the glory, both of his own holi- 
ness, and the holiness of the Mediator, are to receive their full man- 
ifestation. As it is a part of the holiness of Christ to “sanctify his 
church” (Eph. v. 26, 27) till not a wrinkle or spot be left, so itis the 

art of God not to leave that work imperfect which his holiness 
hath attempted a second time to beautify his creature with. He will 
not cease exalting this attribute, which is the believers’ by the 
new covenant, till he utters that applauding speech of his own 
work (Cant. iv. 7), “Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot 
in thee.” 

Use 3, is for Exhortation. Is holiness an eminent perfection of 
the Divine nature? then— 

Exhort. 1. Let us get and preserve right and strong apprehensions 
of this Divine perfection. Without a due sense of it, we can never 
exalt God in our hearts; and the more distinct conceptions we have 
of this, and the rest of his attributes, the more we glorify him. 
When Moses considered God as ‘‘his strength and salvation,” he 
would exalt him (Exod. xv. 2); and he could never break out in so 
admirable a doxology as that in the text, without a deep sense of 
the glory of his purity, which he speaks of with so much admira- 
tion. Such a sense will be of use to us. 

1. In promoting genuine convictions. A deep consideration of 
the holiness of God cannot but be followed with a deep considera- 
tion of our impure and miserable condition by reason of sin: we 
cannot glance upon it without reflections upon our own vileness. 
Adam no sooner heard the voice of a holy God in the garden, but 
he considered his own nakedness with shame and fear (Gen. i. 10); 
much less can we fix our minds upon it, but we must be touched 
with a sense of our own uncleanness. The clear beams of the sun 
discover that filthiness in our garments and members, which was not 
visible in the darkness of the night. Impure metals are discerned 
by comparing them with that which is pure and perfect in its kind. 
The sense of guilt is the first natural result upon a sense of this ex- 
cellent perfection; and the sense of the imperfection of our own 
righteousness is the next. Who can think of it, and reflect upon 


192 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


himself as an object fit for Divine love? Who can have a due 
thought of it, without regarding himself as stubble before a consum- 
ing fire? Who can, without a confusion of heart and face, glance 
upon that pure eye which beholds with detestation the foul motes, 
as well as the filthier and bigger spots? When Isaiah saw his glory, 
and heard how highly the angels exalted God for this perfection, he 
was in a cold sweat, ready to swoon, till a seraphim, with a coal from 
the altar, both purged and revived him (Isa. vi. 5, 7). They are 
sound and genuine convictions, which have the prospect of Divine 
purity for their immediate spring, and not a foresight of our own 
misery; when it is not the punishment we have deserved, but the 
holiness we have offended, most grates our hearts. Such convic- 
tions are the first rude draughts of the Divine image in our spirits, 
and grateful to God, because they are an acknowledgment of the 
glory of this attribute, and the first mark of honor given to it by 
the creature. Those that never had a sense of their own vileness, 
were always destitute of a sense of God’s holiness. And, by the 
way, we may observe, that those that scoff at any for hanging down 
the head under the consideration and conviction of sin (as is too 
usual with the world), scoff at them for having deeper appre- 
hensions of the purity of God than themselves, and consequently 
make a mock of the holiness of God which is the ground of those 
convictions; a sense of this would prevent such a damnable re- 
proaching. 

2. A sense of this will render us humble in the possession of the 
greatest holiness a creature were capable of. We are apt to be 
proud, with the Pharisee, when we look upon others wallowing in 
the mire of base and unnatural lusts: but let any clap their wings, 
if they can, in a vain boasting and exaltation, when they view the 
holiness of God. What torch, if it had reason, would be proud, and 
swagger in its own light, if it compared itself with the sun? ‘Who 
can stand before this holy Lord God?” is the just reflection of the 
holiest person, as it was of those (1 Sam. vi. 20) that had felt the 
marks of his jealousy after their looking into the ark, though likely 
out of affection to it, and triumphant joy at its return. When did 
the angels testify, by the covering of their faces, their weakness to 
bear the lustre of his majesty, but when they beheld his glory? 
When did they signify, by their covering their feet, the shame of 
their own vileness, but when their hearts were fullest of the applaud- 
ings of this perfection (Isa. vi. 2,8)? Though they found them. 
selves without spot, yet not with such a holiness that they could ap- 
pear either with their faces or feet unvailed and unmasked in the 
presence of God. Doth the immense splendor of this attribute en- 
gender shaming reflections in those pure spirits? What will it, what 
should it, do in us, that dwell in houses of clay, and creep up and 
down with that clay upon our backs, and too much of it in our 
hearts? ' The stars themselves, which appear beautiful in the night, 
are masked at the awaking of the sun. What a dim light is that of 
a glow-worm to that of the sun! The apprehensions of this made 
the elders humble themselves in the midst of their glory, by “ cast» 
ing down their crowns before his throne” (Rev. iv. 8, 10); a meta: 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 193 


phor taken from the triumphing generals among the Romans, who 
hung up their victorious laurels in the Capitol, dedicating them to 
their gods, acknowledging them their superiors in strength, and au- 
thors of their victory. This self-emptiness at the consideration of 
Divine purity, is the note of the true church, represented by the 
twenty-four elders, and a note of a true member of the church; 
whereas boasting of perfection and merit is the property of the anti- 
christian tribe, that have mean thoughts of this adorable perfection, 
and think themselves more righteous than the unspotted angels. 
W hat a self-annihilation is there in a good man, when the sense of 
Divine purity is most lively in him! yea, how detestable is he to 
himself! 'There is as little proportion between the holiness of the 
Divine Majesty, and that of the most righteous creature, as there is 
between a nearness of a person that stands upon a mountain, to the 
sun, and of him that beholds him in a vale; one is nearer than the 
other, but it is an advantage not to be boasted of, in regard of the 
vast distance that is between the sun and the elevated spectator. 

3. This would make us full of an affectionate reverence in all our 
approaches to God. By this perfection God is rendered venerable, 
and fit to be reverenced by his creature; and magnificent thoughts 
of it in the creature would awaken him to an actual reverence of the 
Divine majesty (Ps. ii. 9): “Holy and reverend is his name;” a 
good opinion of this would engender in us a sincere respect towards 
him; we should then “serve the Lord with fear,” as the expression 
is (Ps. ii. 11), that is, be afraid to cast anything before him that may 
offend the eyes of his purity. Who would venture rashly and garishly 
into the presence of an eminent moralist, or of a righteous king upon 
his throne? ‘The fixedness of the angels arose from the continual 
prospect of this. What if we had been with Isaiah when he saw the 
vision, and beheld him in the same glory, and the heavenly choir in 
their reverential posture in the service of God; would it not have 
barred our wanderings, and staked us down to our duty? Would 
not the fortifying an idea of it in our minds produce the same effect? 
It is for want of this we carry ourselves so loosely and unbecoming: 
ly in the Divine presence, with the same, or meaner, affections than 
those wherewith we stand before some vile creature that is our supe- 
rior in the world; as though a piece of filthy flesh were more valua- 
ble than this perfection of the Divinity. How doth the Psalmist 
double his exhortation to men to sing praise to God (Ps. xlvii. 6): 
“Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises unto our King, sing 
praises ;” because of his majesty, and the purity of his dominion! and 
(ver. 8), “‘God reigneth over the heathen, God sitteth upon the throne 
of his holiness.” How would this elevate us in praise, and prostrate 
us in prayer, when we praise and pray with an understanding and 
insight of that nature we bless or implore; as he speaks (ver. 7), 
“Sing ye praises with understanding.” The holiness of God in his 
government and dominion, the holiness of his nature, and the holi- 
ness of his precepts, should beget in us an humble respect in our 
approaches. ‘The more we grow in a sense of this, the more shall 
we advance in the true performance of all our duties. Those nations 
which adored the sun, had they at first seen his brightness wrapped 

VOL 11.—13 


194 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


and masked in a cloud, and paid a veneration to it, how would their 
adorations have mounted to a greater point, after they had seen it 
in its full brightness, shaking off those vails, and chasing away the 
mists before it! what a profound reverence would they have paid it, 
when they beheld it in its glory and meridian brightness!> Our 
reverence to God in all our addresses to him will arrive to greater 
degrees, if every act of duty be ushered in, and seasoned with the 
thoughts of God as sitting upon a throne of holiness; we shall have 
a more becoming sense of our own vileness, a greater ardor to his 
service, a deeper respect in his presence, if our understanding be 
more cleared, and possessed with notions of this perfection. Thus 
take a view of God in this part of his glory, before you fall down 
before his throne, and assure yourselves you will find your hearts 
and services quickened with a new and lively spirit. _ 

4. A due sense of this perfection in God would produce in us a 
fear of God, and arm us against temptation and sin. What made 
the heathen so wanton and loose, but the representations of their 
gods as vicious? Who would stick at adulteries, and more pro- 
digious lusts, that can take a pattern for them from the person he 
adores for a deity? Upon which account Plato would have poets 
banished from his commonwealth, because, by dressing up their gods 
in wanton garbs in their poems, they encouraged wickedness in the 
people. But if the thoughts of God’s holiness were impressed upon 
us, we should regard sin with the same eye, mark it with the same 
detestation in our measures, as God himself doth. So far as we are 
sensible of the Divine purity, we should account sin vile as it de- 
serves; we should hate it entirely, without a grain of love to it, and 
hate it perpetually (Ps. cxix. 104): ‘“‘ Through thy precepts I get 
understanding, therefore I hate every false way.” He looks into 
God’s statute-book, and thereby arrives to an understanding of the 
purity of his nature, whence his hatred of iniquity commenced. 
This would govern our motion, check our vices; 1t would make us 
tremble at the hissing of a temptation: when a corruption did but 
peep out, and put forth its head, a look to the Divine Purity would 
be attended with a fresh convoy of strength to resist it. There is no 
such fortification, as to be wrapped up in the sense of this: this would 
fill us with an awe of God; we should be ashamed to admit any filthy 
thing into us, which we know is detestable to his pure eye. As the ap- 
proach of a grave and serious man makes children hasten their trifles 
out of the way; so would a consideration of this attribute make us cast 
away our idols, and fling away our ridiculous thoughts and designs. 

5. A due sense of this perfection would inflame us with a vehe- 
ment desire to be conformed to Him. All our desires would be ar- 
dent to regulate ourselves according to this pattern of holiness and 
goodness, which is not to be equalled; the contemplating it as it 
shines forth in the face of Christ, will “transform us into the same 
image” (2 Cor. iii. 19). Since our lapsed state, we cannot behold the 
holiness of God in itself without affrightment; nor is it an object of 
imitation, but as tempered in Christ to our view. When we cannot, 
without blinding ourselves, look upon the sun in its brightness, we 

> Amyrald, Moral. Tom. V. p. 462. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 195 


may behold it through a colored glass, whereby the lustre of it is 
moderated, without dazzling our eyes. The sense of it will furnish 
us with a greatness of mind, that little things will be contemned by 
us; motives of a greater alloy would have little influence upon us; 
we should have the highest motives to every duty, and motives of 
the same strain which influence the angels above. It would change 
us, not only into an angelical nature, but a divine nature: we should 
act like men of another sphere; as if we had received our original 
in another world, and seen with angels the ravishing beauties of 
heaven. How little would the mean employments of the world sink 
us into dirt and mud! How often hath the meditation of the courage 
of a valiant man, or acuteness and industry of a learned person, 
spurred on some men to an imitation of them, and transformed them 
into the same nature! as the looking upon the sun imprints an image 
of the sun upon our eye, that we seem to behold nothing but the sun 
a while after. The view of the Divine purity would fill us with a 
holy generosity to imitate him, more than the examples of the best 
men upon earth. It was a saying of a heathen, that “if virtue were 
visible, it would kindle a noble flame of love to it in the heart, by 
its ravishing beauty.” Shall the infinite purity of the Author of all 
virtue come short of the strength of a creature? Can we not render 
that visible to us by frequent meditation, which, though it be invisi- 
ble in his nature, is made visible in his law, in his ways, in his Son? 
It would make us ready to obey him, since we know he cannot com- 
mand anything that is sinful, but what is holy, just, and good: i 
would put all our affections in their due place, elevate them above 
the creature, and subject them to the Creator. 

6. It would make us patient and contented under all God's dispen- 
sations. All penal evils are the fruits of his holiness, as he is Judge 
and Governor of the world: he is not an arbitrary Judge, nor doth 
any sentence pronounced, nor warrant for execution issue from him, 
but what bears upon it a stamp of the righteousness of his nature ; 
he doth nothing by passion or unrighteousness, but according to the 
eternal law of his own unstained nature, which is the rule to him in 
his works, the basis and foundation of his throne and sovereign do- 
minion (Ps. lxxxix. 14): “Justice,” or righteousness, ‘and judg- 
ment are the habitation of thy throne ;” upon these his sovereign 
power is established: so that there can be no just complaint or in- 
dictment brought against any of his proceedings with men. How 
doth our Saviour, who had the highest apprehensions of God’s holi- 
ness, justify God in his deepest distresses, when he cried, and was 
not answered in the particular he desired, in that prophetic Psalm of 
him (Ps. xxii. 2, 3), “I cry day and night, but thou hearest not!” 
Thou seemest to be deaf to all my petitions, afar off “ from the words 
of my roaring; but thou art holy;” I cast no blame upon thee: all 
thy dealings are squared by thy holiness: this is the only law to 
thee ; in this I acquiesce. It is part of thy holiness to hide thy face 
from me, to show thereby thy detestation of sin. Our Saviour adores 
the Divine purity in his sharpest agony, and a like sense of it would 
guide us in the same steps to acknowledge and glorify it, in our 
greatest desertions and afflictions; especially since as they are the 


196 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


fruit of the holiness of his nature, so they are the means to impart te 
us clearer stamps of holiness, according to that in himself, which is 
the original copy (Heb. xii. 10). He melts us down as gold, to fit us 
for the receiving a new impression, to mortify the affections of the 
flesh, and clothe us with the graces of his Spirit. The due sense of 
this would make us to submit to his stroke, and to wait upon him 
for a good issue of his dealings. 

Exhort. 2. Is holiness a perfection of the Divine nature? Isit the 
glory of the Deity? Then let us glorify this holiness of God. Mo- 
ses glorifies it in the text, and glorifies it in a song, which was a 
copy for all ages. The whole corporation of seraphims have their 
mouths filled with the praises of it. The saints, whether militant on 
earth, or triumphant in heaven, are to continue the same acclama- 
tion, “ Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts” (Rev. iv. 8). Neither 
angels nor glorified spirits exalt at the same rate the power which 
formed them creatures, nor goodness which preserves them in a 
blessed immortality, as they do holiness, which they bear some beams 
of in their own nature, and whereby they are capacitated to stand 
before His throne. Upon the account of this, a debt of praise is de- 
manded of all rational creatures by the Psalmist (Ps. xcix. 3), ‘“ Let 
them praise thy great and terrible name, for it is holy.” Not so 
much for the greatness of his Majesty, or the treasures of his justice ; 
but as they are considered in conjunction with his holiness, which 
renders them beautiful; “for it is holy.” Grandeur and majesty, 
simply in themselves, are not objects of praise, nor do they merit the 
acclamations of men, when destitute of righteousness : this only ren- 
ders everything else adorable ; and this adorns the Divine greatness 
with an amiableness (Isa. xii. 6): “Great is the Holy One of Israel 
in the midst of thee ;” and makes his might worthy of praise (Luke 
i. 49). In honoring this, which is the soul and spirit of all the rest, 
we give a glory to all the perfections which constitute and beautify 
his nature: and without the glorifying this we glorify nothing of 
them, though we should extol every other single attribute a thousand 
times. He values no other adoration of his creatures, unless this be 

interested, nor accepts anything as a glory from them (Lev. x. 3) 
“T will be sanctified in them that come near me, and I will be glori- 
fied:” as if he had said, In manifesting my name to be holy, you 
truly, you only honor me. And as the Scripture seldom speaks of 
this perfection without a particular emphasis, it teaches us not to 
think of it without a special elevation of heart: by this act only, 
while we are on earth, can we join consort with the angels in heaven ; 
he that doth not honor it, delight in it, and in the meditation of it, 
hath no resemblance of it; he hath none of the image, that delights 
not in the original. Everything of God is glorious, but this most of 
all. If he built the world principally for anything, it was for the 
communication of his goodness, and display of his holiness. He 
formed the rational creature to manifest his holiness in that law 
whereby he was to be governed: then deprive not God of the design 
of his own glory. We honor this attribute, 
1. When we make it the ground of our love to God. Not be- 
cause he is gracious to us, but holy in himself. As God honors it, 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 197 


in loving himself for it, we should honor it, by pitching our affections 
upon him chiefly for it. What renders God amiable to himself, 
should render him lovely to all his creatures (Isa. xli. 21): “ The 
Lord is well pleased for his righteousness’ sake.” If the hatred of 
evil be the immediate result of a love to God, then the peculiar ob- 
ject or term of our love to God, must be that perfection which stands 
in direct opposition to the hatred of evil (Ps. xcevii. 10): ‘“ Ye that 
love the Lord, hate evil.” When we honor his holiness in every 
stamp and impression of it: his law, not principally because of its 
usefulness to us, its accommodateness to the order of the world, but 
for its innate purity; and his people, not for our interest in them, so 
much as for bearing upon them this glittering mark of the Deity, we 
honor then the purity of the Lawgiver, and the excellency of the 
Sanctifier. 

2. We honor it, when we regard chiefly the illustrious appearance 
of this in his judgments in the world. Ina case of temporal judg- 
ment, Moses celebrates it in the text; in a case of spiritual judg- 
ments, the angels applaud it in Isaiah. All his severe proceedings 
are nothing but the strong breathings of this attribute. Purity 1s 
the flash of his revenging sword. If he did not hate evil, his ven- 
geance would not reach the committers of it. Heisa ‘refiner’s fire” 
in the day of his anger (Mal. ii. 2). By his separating judgments, 
“he takes away the wicked of the earth like dross” (Ps. cxix. 119). 
How is his holiness honored, when we take notice of his sweeping 
out the rubbish of the world; how he suits punishment to sin, and 
discovers his hatred of the matter and circumstances of the evil, in 
the matter and circumstances of the judgment. This perfection is 
legible in every stroke of his sword; we honor it when we read the 
syllables of it, and not by standing amazed only at the greatness and 
severity of the blow, when we read how holy he is in his most terri- 
ble dispensations: for as in them God magnifies the greatness of his 
power, so he sanctifies himself; that is, declares the purity of his na- 
ture as a revenger of all impiety (Hzek. xxxviu. 22, 28); “And I 
will plead against him with pestilence, and with blood: and I will 
rain upon him, and upon his bands, and upon the people that are 
with him, an overflowing rain and great hailstones; fire, and brim- 
stone. Thus will I magnify myself, and sanctify myself.” 

3. We honor this attribute, when we take notice of it in every 
accomplishment of his promise, and every grant of a mercy. His 
truth is but a branch of his righteousness, a slip from this root. He 
is glorious in holiness in the accouat of Moses, because he “led forth 
his people whom he had redeemed” (Exod. xv. 13); his people by a 
covenant with their fathers, being the God of Moses, the God of 
{srael, and the God of their: fathers (ver. 2). ‘My God, and my 
father’s God, I will exalt thee.” For what? for his faithfulness to 
his promise. The holiness of God, which Mary (Luke i. 49) magni- 
fies, is summed up in this, the help he afforded his servant Israel in 
the “remembrance of his mercy, as he spake to our fathers, to 
Abraham and his seed forever” (ver. 54, 55). The certainty of his 
covenant mercy depends upon an unchangeableness of his holiness. 
What are “sure mercies,” (Isa. ly. 8), are holy mercies in the Septua- 


198 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


gint, and in Acts xiii. 84, which makes that translation canonical. 
His nearness to answer us, when we call upon him for such mercies, 
is a fruit of the holiness of his name and nature (Ps. clxv.17). “The 
Lord is holy in all his works; the Lord is nigh to all them that call 
upon him.” Hannah, after a return of prayer, sets a particular mark. 
upon this, in her song (1 Sam. ii. 2); “There is none holy as the 
Lord ;” separated from all dross, firm to his covenant, and righteous 
in it to his suppliants, that confide in him, and plead his word. 
When we observe the workings of this in every return of prayer, 
we honor it; it is a sign the mercy is really a return of prayer, and 
not a mercy of course, bearing upon it only the characters of a com- 
mon providence. This was the perfection David would bless, for the 
catalogue of mercies in Ps. ci. 1, &c.; “ Bless his holy name.” Cer- 
tainly, one reason why sincere prayer is so delightful to him, is 
because it puts him upon the exercise of this his beloved perfection, 
which he so much delighteth to honor. Since God acts in all those 
as the governor of the world, we honor him not, unless we take 
notice of that righteousness which fits him for a governor, and is the 
inward spring of all his motions (Gen. xvii. 25). “Shall not the 
Judge of all the earth do right?” It was his design in his pity to 
Tsrael, as well as the calamities he intended against the heathens, to 
be “sanctified in them; that is, declared holy in his merciful as well 
as his judicial procedure (Ezra xxxvi. 21, 23). Hereby God credits 
his righteousness, which seemed to be forgotten by the one, and con- 
temned by the other;¢ he removes, by this, all suspicion of unfaith- 
fulness in him. 

4. We honor this attribute, when we trust his covenant, and 
promise against outward appearances. ‘Thus our Saviour, in the 
prophecy of him (Ps. xxii. 2-4), when God seemed to bar up the 
gates of his palace against the entry of any more petitions, this attri- 
bute proves the support of the Redeemer’s soul; ‘‘ But thou art holy, 
O thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel:” as it refers to what goes 
before, it has been twice explained; as it refers to what follows, it is 
a ground of trust; ‘Thou inhabitest the praises of Israel :” thou hast 
had the praises of Israel for many ages, for thy holiness. How? 
“Our fathers trusted in thee, and thou didst deliver them ;” they 
honored thy holiness by their trust, and thou didst honor their faith 
by a deliverance; thou always hadst a purity that would not shame 
nor confound them. I will trust in thee as thou art holy, and expect 
the breaking out of this attribute for my good as well as my prede- 
cessors; “Our fathers trusted in thee,” Xe. 

5. We honor this attribute, when we show a greater affection to 
the marks of his holiness in times of the greatest contempt of it. As 
the Psalmist (Ps. cxix. 126, 127); “They have made void thy law, 
therefore I love thy commandments above gold;” while they spurn 
at the purity of thy law, I will value it above the gold they possess; 
I will esteem it as gold, because others count it as dross; by their 
scorn of it, my love to it shall be the warmer; and my hatred of ini- 
quity shall be the sharper: the disdain of others should inflame us 
with a zeal and fortitude to appear in behalf of his despised honor. 


© Sanet. zn doe. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 199 


We honor this holiness many other ways; by preparation for our 
addresses to him, out of a sense of his purity ; when we imitate it: 
as He honors us by “teaching us his statutes” (Ps. cxix. 135), so we 
honor him by learning and observing them. When we beg of him 
to show himself a refiner of us, to make us more conformable to him 
in holiness, and bless him for any communication of it to us, it ren- 
ders us beautiful and lovely in his sight. To conclude: to honor it, 
is the way to engage it for us; to give it the glory of what it hath 
done, by the arm of power for our rescue from sin, and beating down 
our corruptions at his feet, is the way to see more of its marvellous 
works, and behold a clearer brightness. As unthankfulness makes 
him withdraw his grace (Rom. i. 21, 24), so glorifying him causes 
him to impart it. God honors men in the same way they honor 
him; when we honor him by acknowledging his purity, he will 
honor us by communicating of it to us. This is the way to derive a 
greater excellency to our souls. 

Exhort. 8. Since holiness is an eminent perfection of the Divine 
nature, let us labor after a conformity to God in this perfection. The 
nature of God is presented to us in the Scripture, both as a pattern 
to imitate, and a motive to persuade the creature to holiness (1 John 
iii. 3; Matt. v. 48; Lev. xi. 44; 1 Pet. i. 15, 16). Since it is, there- 
fore, the nature of God, the more our natures are beautified with it, 
the more like we are to the Divine nature. It is not the pattern of 
angels, or archangels, that our Saviour, or his apostle, proposeth for 
our imitation; but the original of all purity, God himself; the same 
that created us, to be imitated by us. Nor is an equal degree of 
purity enjoined us; though we are to be pure, and perfect, and mer- 
ciful as God is, yet not essentially so; for that would be to command. 
us an impossibility in itself; as much as to order us to cease to be 
creatures, and commence gods. No creature can be essentially holy 
but by participation from the chief Fountain of Holiness; but we 
must have the same kind of holiness, the same truth of holiness. As 
a short line may be as straight as another, though it parallel it not 
in the immense length of it; a copy may have the likeness of the 
original, though not the same perfection; we cannot be good, with- 
out eyeing some exemplar of goodness as the pattern. No pattern 
is so suitable as that which is the highest goodness and purity. That 
limner that would draw the most excellent piece, fixes his eyes upon 
the most perfect pattern. He that would be a good orator, or poet, 
or artificer, considers some person most excellent in each kind, as 
the object of his imitation. Who so fit as God to be viewed as the 
pattern of holiness, in our intendment of, and endeavor after holi- 
ness? The Stoics, one of the best sects of philosophers, advised their 
disciples to pitch upon some eminent example of virtue, according 
to which to form their lives; as Socrates, &c. But true holiness doth 
not only endeavor to live the life of a good man, but chooses to live 
a divine life; as before the man was “alienated from the life of God” 
(Eph. iv. 19), so, upon his return, he aspires after the life of God. To 
endeavor to be like a good man is to make one image like another, 
to set our clocks by other clocks, without regarding the sun: but 
true holiness consists in a likeness to the most exact sampler. God 


200 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


being the first purity, is the rule as well as the spring of all purity 
in the creature, the chief and first object of imitation. We disown 
ourselves to be his creatures, if we breathe not after a resemblance to 
him in what he is imitable. There was in man, as created according 
to God’s image, a natural appetite to resemble God: it was at first 
planted in him by the Author of his nature. The devil’s temptation 
of him by that motive to transgress the law, had been as an arrow 
shot against a brazen wall, had there not been a desire of some like- 
ness io his Creator engraven upon him (Gen. iii. 5): it would have 
had no more influence upon him, than it could have had upon a 
mere animal. But man mistook the term; he would have been like 
God in knowledge, whereas, he should have affected a greater resem- 
blance of him in purity. O that we could exemplify God in our 
nature! Precepts may instruct us more, but examples affect us more; 
one directs us, but the other attracts us. What can be more attrac- 
tive of our imitation, than that which is the original of all purity, 
both in men and angels? This conformity to him consists in an 
imitation of him, 

1. In his law. The purity of his nature was first visible in this 
glass; hence, it is called a “holy” law (Rom. vii. 12); a “pure” law 
(Ps. xix. 8). Holy and pure, as it is a ray of the pure nature of the 
Lawgiver. When our lives are a comment upon his law, they are 
expressive of his holiness: we conform to his holiness when we regu- 
late ourselves by his law, as it is a transcript of his holiness: we do 
not imitate it, when we do a thing in the matter of it agreeable to 
that holy rule, but when we do it with respect to the purity of the 
Lawgiver beaming in it. If it be agreeable to God’s will, and con- 
venient for some design of our own, and we do anything only with 
a respect to that design, we make not God’s holiness discovered in 
the law our rule, but our own conveniency: it is not a conformity to 
God, but a conformity of our actions to self. As in abstinence from 
mtemperate courses, not because the holiness of God in his law hath 
prescribed it, but because the health of our bodies, or some noble 
contentments of life, require it; then it is not God’s holiness that is 
our rule, but our own security, conveniency, or something else which 
we make a God to ourselves. It must be a real conformity to the 
Jaw: our holiness should shine as really in the practice, as God’s 
purity doth in the precept. God hath not a pretence of purity in his 
nature, but a reality: it is not only a sudden boiling up of an admi- 
ration of him, or a starting wish to be like him, from some sudden 
Impression upon the fancy, which is a mere temporary blaze, but a 
‘settled temper of soul, loving everything that is like him, doing 
things out of a firm desire to resemble his purity in the copy he hath 
set; not a resting in negatives, but aspiring to positives; holy and 
harmless are distinct things: they were distinct qualifications in our 
High Priest in his obedience to the law (Heb. vii. 26), so they must 
be in us. 

2. In his Christ. As the law is the transcript, so Christ is the 
image of his holiness: the glory of God is too dazzling to be beheld 
by us: the acute eye of an angel is too weak to look upon that 
bright sun without covering his face: we are much too weak to take 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 204 


our measures from that purity which is infinite in his nature. But 
he hath made his Son lke us, that by the imitation of him in that 
temper, and shadow of human flesh, we may arrive to a resemblance 
of him (2 Cor. 11.18). Then there is a conformity to him, when 
that which Christ did is drawn in lively colors in the soul of a Chris- 
tian; when, as he died upon the cross, we die to our sins; as he rose 
from the grave, we rise from our lusts; as he ascended on high, we 
mount our souls thither; when we express in our lives what shined 
in his, and exemplify in our hearts what he acted in the world, and 
become one with him, as he was separate from sinners. The holiness 
of God in Christ is our ultimate pattern: as we are not only to be- 
lieve in Christ, but “by Christ in God” (John xiv. 1), so we are not 
only to imitate Christ, but the holiness of God as discovered in Christ. 
And, to enforce this upon us, let us consider, 

(1.) It is this only wherein he commands our imitation of him. We 
are not commanded to be mighty and wise, as God is mighty and wise: 
but “be holy, as lam holy.” The declarations of his power are to 
enforce our subjection; those of his wisdom, to encourage our direc- 
tion by him; but this only to attract our imitation. When he saith, 
“T am holy,” the immediate inference he makes, is, “‘ Be ye so too,” 
which is not the proper instruction from any other perfection.4 Man 
was created by Divine power, and harmonized by Divine wisdom, but 
not after them, or according to them, as the true image; this was the 
prerogative of Divine holiness, to be the pattern of his rational crea- 
ture: wisdom and power were subservient to this, the one as the pencil, 
the other as the hand that moved it. The condition of a creature is 
too mean to have the communications of the Divine essence; the true 
impressions of his righteousness and goodness we are only capable of. 
It is only in those moral perfections we are said to resemble God. The 
devils, those impure and ruined spirits, are nearer to him in strength 
and knowledge than we are; yet in regard of that natural and intel- 
lectual perfection, never counted like him, but at the greatest dis- 
tance from him, because at the greatest distance from his purity. 
God values not a natural might, nor an acute understanding, nor 
vouchsafes such perfections the glorious title of that of his image. 
Plutarch saith, God is angry with those that imitate his thunder or 
lightning, his works of majesty, but delighted with those that imitate 
his virtue. In this only we can never incur any reproof from him, 
but for falling short of him and his glory. Had Adam endeavored 
after an imitation of this, instead of that of Divine knowledge, he 
had escaped his fall, and preserved his standing; and had Lucifer 
wished himself like God in this, as well as his dominion, he had 
still been a glorious angel, instead of being now a ghastly devil: to 
reach after a union with the Supreme Being, in regard of holiness, 
is the only generous and commendable ambition. 

(2.) This is the prime way of honoring God. We do not so glorify 
God by elevated admirations, or eloquent expressions, or pompous 
services of him, as when we aspire to a conversing with him with 
unstained spirits, and live to him in living like him. The angels are 


¢ “Tn this,” saith Plato, “God is év uéow rapddevyua. e Eph. iv. 24. Col. iii. 10. 
f Eugub, inde Perenni Philoso. lib. vi. cap. 6. 


202 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


not called holy for applauding his purity, but conforming to it. The 
more perfect any creature is in the rank of beings, the more is the 
Creator honored; as it is more for the honor of God to create an 
angel or man, than a mere animal; because there are in such clearer 
characters of Divine power and goodness, than in those that are in- 
ferior. The more perfect any creature is morally, the more is God 
glorified by that creature; it is a real declaration, that God is the best 
and most amiable Being; that nothing besides him is valuable, and 
worthy to be object of our imitation. It is a greater honoring of 
him, than the highest acts of devotion, and the most religious bodily 
exercise, or the singing this song of Moses in the text, with a trium- 
phant spirit; as it is more the honor of a father to be imitated in his 
virtues by his son, than to have all the glavering commendations by 
the tongue or pen of a vicious and debauched child. By this we 
honor him in that perfection which is dearest to him, and counted 
by him as the chiefest glory of his nature. God seems to accept the 
glorifying this attribute, as if it were a real addition to that holiness 
- which is infinite in his nature, and because infinite, cannot admit of 
any increase: and, therefore, the word sanctified is used instead of 
glorified. (Isa. viii. 18), ‘‘Sanctify the Lord of Hosts himself, and 
let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.” And (Isa. xxix. 
23), “They shall sanctify the holy One of Jacob, and fear the God 
of Israel.” This sanctification of God is by the fear of him, which 
signifies in the language of the Old Testament, a reverence of him, 
and a righteousness before him. He doth not say, when he would 
have his power or wisdom glorified, Empower me or make me wise; 
but when he would have his holiness glorified by the creature, it is, 
Sanctify me; that is, manifest the purity of my nature by the holi- 
ness of your lives: but he expresseth it in such a term, as if 1t were 
an addition to this infinite perfection; so acceptable it is to him, as 
if it were a contribution from his creature for the enlarging an attri- 
bute so pleasing to him, and so glorious in his eye. It is, as much 
as in the creature lies, a preserving the life of God, since this perfec- 
tion is his life; and that he would as soon part with his life as part 
with his purity. It keeps up the reputation of God in the world, and 
attracts others to a love of him; whereas, unworthy carriages defame 
God in the eyes of men, and bring up an ill report of him, as if he 
were such an one as those that profess him, and walk unsuitably to 
their profession, appear to be. 

(3.) This is the excellency and beauty of a creature. The title of 
“beauty” is given to it in Ps. cx. 8; “ beauties,” in the plural number, 
as comprehending it in all other beauties whatsoever. What is a 
Divine excellency cannot be a creature’s deformity: the natural beauty 
of it is a representation of the Divinity; and a holy man ought to es- 
teem himself excellent in being such in his measure as his God is, 
and puts his principal felicity in the possession of the same purity in 
truth. This is the refined complexion of the angels that stand before 
his throne. The devils lost their comeliness when they fell from it. 
It was the honor of the human nature of our Saviour, not only to be 
united to the Deity, but to be sanctified by it. He was “ fairer than 
all the children of men,” because he had a holiness above the children 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 208 
of men: ‘‘ grace was poured into his lips” (Ps. xlv. 2). It was the jewel 
of the reasonable nature in paradise: conformity to God was man’s 
original happiness in his created state; and what was naturally so, 
cannot but be immutably so in its own nature. The beauty of every 
copied thing consists in its likeness to the original; everything hath 
more of loveliness, as it hath greater impressions of its first pattern: 
in this regard holiness hath more of beauty on it than the whole 
creation, because it partakes of a greater excellency of God than the 
sun, moon, and stars. No greater glory can be, than to be a con- 
spicuous and visible image of the invisible, and holy, and blessed 
God. As this is the splendor of all the Divine attributes, so it is the 
flower of all a christian’s graces, the crown of all religion: it is the 
glory of the Spirit. In this regard the king’s daughter is said to be 
‘all glorious within” (Ps. xlv. 13). It is more excellent than the 
soul itself, since the greatest soul is but a deformed piece without it: 
a “diamond without lustre.” What are the noble faculties of the 
soul without it, but as a curious rusty watch, a delicate heap of dis- 
order and confusion? Itis impossible there can be beauty where there 
are a multitude of “spots and wrinkles” that blemish a countenance 
(Eph. v. 27). It can never be in its true brightness but when it is 
perfect in purity; when it regains what it was possessed of by crea- 
tion, and dispossessed of by the fall, and recovers its primitive temper. 
We are not so beautiful by being the work of God, as by having a 
stamp of God upon us. Worldly greatness may make men honor- 
able in the sight of creeping worms. Soft lives, ambitious reaches, 
luxurious pleasures, and a pompous religion, render no man excel- 
lent and noble in the sight of God: this is not the excellency and 
nobility of the Deity which we are bound to resemble; other lines 
of a Divine image must be drawn in us to render us truly excel- 
lent. 

(4.) It is our life. What is the life of God is truly the life of a 
rational creature.4 The life of the body consists not in the perfection 
of its members, and the integrity of its organs; these remain when 
the body becomes a carcass; but in the presence of the soul, and its 
vigorous animation of every part to perform the distinct offices be- 
longing to each of them. The life of the soul consists not in its 
being, or spiritual substance, or the excellency of its faculties of un- 
derstanding and will, but in the moral and becoming operations of 
them. The spirit is only “life because of righteousness” (Rom. viii. 
10). The faculties are turned by it, to acquit themselves in their 
functions, according to the will of God; the absence of this doth not 
only deform the soul, but, in a sort, annihilate it, in regard of its 
true essence and end. Grace gives a Christian being, and a want of 
it is the want of a true being (1 Cor. xv. 10). When Adam divested 
himself of his original righteousness, he came under the force of 
the threatening, in regard of a spiritual death; every person is 
‘morally dead while he lives” an unholy life (1 Tim. v. 6). What 
life is to the body, that is righteousness to the spirit; and the greater 
measure of holiness it hath, the more of life it hath, because it is in a 


& Vaughan pp. 4, 5. h Amirald. in Heb. pp. 101, 102. 


2904. CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES, 


greater nearness, and partakes more fully of the fountain of life. Is 
not that the most worthy life, which God makes most account of, 
without which his life could not be a pleasant and blessed life, but a 
life worse than death? What a miserable life is that of the men of 
the world, that are carried, with greedy inclinations, to all manner 
of unrighteousness, whither their interests or their lusts invite them! 
The most beautiful body is a carcass, and the most honorable person 
hath but a brutish life (Ps. xlix. 20); miserable creatures when their 
life shall be extinct without a Divine rectitude, when all other things 
will vanish as the shadows of the night at the appearance of the sun ! 
Holiness is our life. 

(5.) It is this only fits us for communion with God. Since it is 
our beauty and our life, withoutit what communion can an excellent 
God have with deformed creatures; a living God with dead creatures ? 
‘‘ Without holiness none shall see God” (Heb. xii. 14). The creature 
must be stripped of his unrighteousness, or God of his purity, before 
they cancome together. Likeness is the ground of communion, and 
of delight in it: the opposition between God and unholy souls is as 
great as that between “hght and darkness” (1 Johni. 6). Divine fruition 
is not so much by a union of presence as a union of nature. Heaven 
is not so much an outward as an inward life ; the foundation of glory is 
laid in grace; a resemblance to God is our vital happiness, without 
which the vision of God would not be so much as a cloudy and shadowy 
happiness, but rather a torment than a felicity ; unless we be of a 
like nature to God, we cannot have a pleasing fruition of him. 
Some philosophers think that if our bodies were of the same nature 
with the heavens, of an ethereal substance, the nearness to the sun 
would cherish, not scorch us. Were we partakers of a Divine 
nature, we might enjoy God with delight; whereas, remaining in 
our unlikeness to him, we cannot think of him, and approach to 
him without terror. As soon as sin had stripped man of the image 
of God, he was an exile from the comfortable presence of God, un- 
worthy for God to hold any correspondence with: he can no more 
delight in a defiled person that a man can take a toad into intimate 
converse with him; he would hereby discredit his own nature, and 
justify our impurity. The holiness of a creature only prepares him 
for an eternal conjunction with God in glory. Enoch’s walking 
with God was the cause of his being so soon wafted to the place 
of a full fruition of him; he hath as much delight in such as in 
heaven itself; one is his habitation as well as the other; the one is 
his habitation of glory, and the other is the house of his pleasure: 
if he dwell in Zion, it must be a “holy mountain” (Joel iii. 17), and 
the members of Zion must be upheld in their rectitude and integrit 
before they be ‘set before the face of God forever” (Ps. xli. 12:) 
Such are styled his jewels, his portion, as if he lived upon them, as 
a man upon his inheritance. As God cannot delightin us, so neither 
can we delight in God without it. We must purify ourselves “as 
he is pure,” if we expect to “see him as he is,” in the comfortable 
glory and beauty of his nature (1 John iii. 2, 8), else the sight of 
God would be terrible and troublesome: we cannot be satisfied with 
the likeness of God at the resurrection, unless we have a righteous- 


A 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 2.05 


ness wherewith to “behold his face” (Ps. xvii. 15). It is a vain 
imagination in any to think that heaven can be a place of happiness 
to him, in whose eye the beauty of holiness which fills and adorns it, 
is an unlovely thing; or that any can have a satisfaction in that 
Divine purity which is loathsome to him in the imitations of it. We 
cannot enjoy him, unless we resemble him; nor take any pleasure 
in him, if we were with him, without something of likeness to him. 
Holiness fits us for communion with God. 

(6.) We can have no evidence of our election and adoption with- 
out it. Conformity to God, in purity, is the fruit of electing love 
(Eph. i. 4); “He hath chosen us that we should be holy.” The 
goodness of the fruit evidenceth the nature of the root: this is the 
seal that assures us the patent is the authentic grant of the Prince. 
Whatsoever is holy, speaks itself to be from God; and whosoever 
is holy, speaks himself to belong to God. This is the only evidence 
that “we are born of God” (1 John ii. 29). The subduing our souls 
to him, the forming us into a resemblance to himself, 1s a more cer- 
tain sign we belong to him, than if we had, with Isaiah, seen his 
glory in the vision, with all his train of angels about him. This 
justifies us to be the seed of God, when he hath, as it were, taken a 
slip from his own purity, and engrafted it in our spirits: he can 
never own us for his children without his mark, the stamp of holi- 
ness. The devil’s stamp is none of God’s badge. Our spiritual ex- 
traction from him is but pretended, unless we do things worthy of 
so illustrious a birth, and becoming the honor of so great a Father: 
what evidence can we else have of any child-like love to God, since the 
proper act of love is to imitate the object of our affections? And that 
we may be in some measure like to God in this excellent perfection. 

ist. Let us be often viewing and ruminating on the holiness of 
God, especially as discovered in Christ. It is by a believing medi- 
tation on him, that we are “changed into the same image” (2 Cor. 
iii. 18). We can think often of nothing that is excellent in the 
world, but it draws our faculties to some kind of suitable operation ; 
and why should not such an excellent idea of the holiness of God in 
Christ perfect our understandings, and awaken all the powers of our 
souls to be formed to actions worthy of him? A painter employed 
in the limning some excellent piece, has not only his pattern before 
his eyes, but his eye frequently upon the pattern, to possess his 
fancy to draw forth an exact resemblance. He that would express 
the image of God, must imprint upon his mind the purity of his 
nature; cherish it in his thoughts, that the excellent beauty of it 
may pass from his understanding to his affections, and from his affec- 
tions to his practice. How can we arise to a conformity to God in 
Christ, whose most holy nature we seldom glance upon, and more 
rarely sink our souls into the depths of it by meditation! Be fre- 
quent in the meditation of the holiness of God. 

2d. Let us often exericse ourselves in acts of love to God, because 
of this perfection. The more adoring thoughts we have of God, the 
more delightfully we shall aspire to, and more ravishingly catch 
after, anything that may promote the more full draught of his 
Divine image in our hearts. What we intensely affect, we desire to 


206 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


be as near to as we can, and to be that very thing, rather than our- 
selves. All imitations of others arise from an intense love to their 
persons or excellency. When the soul is ravished with this perfec- 
tion of God, it will desire to be united with it; to have it drawn in 
it, more than to have its own being continued to it: it will desire 
and delight in its own being, in order to this heavenly and spiritual 
work. ‘The impressions of the nature of God upon it, and the imi- 
tations of the nature of God by it, will be more desirable than any 
natural perfection whatsoever. The will in loving is rendered like 
the object beloved; is turned into its nature,i and imbibes its qual- 
ities. The soul, by loving God, will find itself more and more trans- 
formed into the Divine image; whereas, slighted ensamples are never 
thought worthy of imitation. 

3d. Let us make God our end. Every man’s mind forms itself to 
a likeness to that which it makes its chief end. An earthly soul is 
as drossy as the earth he gapes for; an ambitious soul is as elevated 
as the honor he reaches at; the same characters that are upon the 
thing aimed at, will be imprinted upon the spirit of him that aims 
at it. When God and his glory are made our end, we shall find a 
silent likeness pass in upon us; the beauty of God will by degrees 
enter upon our souls. 

4th. In every deliberate action, let us reflect upon the Divine 
purity as a pattern, Let us examine whether anything we are 
prompted unto bear an impression of God upon it; whether it looks 
like a thing that God himself would do in that case, were he in our 
natures and in our circumstances. See whether it hath the livery of 
God upon it, how congruous it is to his nature; whether, and in 
what manner, the holiness of God can be glorified thereby; and let 
us be industrious in all this; for can such an imitation be easy which 
is resisted by the constant assaults of the flesh, which is discouraged 
by our own ignorance, and depressed by our faint and languishing 
desires after it? O! happy we, if there were such a heart in us! 

Lixhort. 4. If holiness be a perfection belonging to the nature of 
God ; then, where there is some weak conformity to the holiness of 
God, let us labor to grow up in it, and breathe after fuller measures 
of it. The more likeness we have to him, the more love we shall 
have from him. Communion will be suitable to our imitation; 
his love to himself in his essence, will cast out beams of love to 
himself in his image. If God loves holiness in a lower measure, 
much more will he love it in a higher degree, because then his 
image is more illustrious and beautiful, and comes nearer to the 
lively lineaments of his own infinite purity. Perfection in anything 
is more lovely and amiable than imperfection in any state; and the 
nearer anything arrives to perfection, the further are those things 
separated from it which might cool an affection to it. An increase 
in holiness is attended with a manifestation of his love (John xiv. 
21): “ He that hath my commandments, and keeps them, he it is 
that loves me, and he shall be loved of my Father, and I will love 
him, and I will manifest myself to him.” It is a testimony of love 
to God, and God will not be behind-hand with the creature in kind- 


i Amor naturam induit, et mores imbibit rei amatee. 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 207 


ness; he loves a holy man for some resemblance to him in his 
nature; but when there is an abounding in sanctified dispositions 
suitable to it, there is an increase of favor; the more we resemble 
the original, the more shall we enjoy the blessedness of that original : 
as any partake more of the Divine likeness, they partake more of 
the Divine happiness. 

Exhort. 5. Let us carry ourselves holily, in a spiritual manner, in 
all our religious approaches to God (Ps. xciii. 5); “ Holiness becomes 
thy house, O Lord, for ever.” ‘This attribute should work in us a 
deep and reverential respect to God. ‘This is the reason rendered 
why we should “worship at his footstool,” in the lowest posture of 
humility prostrate before him, because ‘“‘he 1s holy” (Ps. xcix. 5). 
Shoes must be put off from our feet (Exod. ii. 5), that is, lusts from 
our affections, everything that our souls are clogged and bemired 
with, as the shoe is with dirt. He is not willing we should 
offer to him an impure soul, mired hearts, rotten carcasses, putrefied 
in vice, rotten in iniquity; our services are to be as free from pro- 
faneness, as the sacrifices of the law were to be free from sickliness 
or any blemish. Whatsoever is contrary to his purity, 1s abhorred. 
by him, and unlovely in his sight; and can meet with no other 
success at his hands, but a disdainful turning away both of his eye 
and ear (Isa. i. 15). Since he is an immense purity, he will reject 
from his presence, and from having any communion with him, all 
that which is not conformable to him; as light chases away the 
darkness of the night, and will not mix with it. If we “ stretch 
out” our “hands towards him,” we must ‘put iniquity far away 
from us” (Job xi. 13, 14); the fruits of all service will else drop off 
to nothing. “Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be 
pleasant to the Lord”: when? when the heart is purged by Christ 
sitting as a “purifier of silver” (Mal. iii. 3, 4). Not all the incense 
of the Indies yield him so sweet a savor, as one spiritual act of wor- 
ship from a heart estranged from the vileness of the world, and 
ravished with an affection to, and a desire of imitating, the purity of 
his nature. 

Exhort. 6. Let us address for holiness to God, the fountain of it. 
As he is the author of bodily life in the creature, so he is the author 
of his own life, the life of Godin the soul. By his holiness he makes 
men holy, as the sun by his light enlightens the air. He is not only 
the Holy One, but our Holy One (Isa. xliii. 15); ‘“‘The Lord that 
sanctifies us” (Levit. xx. 8). As he hath mercy to pardon us, so he 
hath holiness to purify us, the excellency of being a sun to comfort 
us, and a shield to protect us, giving “grace and glory” (Ps. lxxiv. 
11). Grace whereby we may have communion with him to our 
comfort, and strength against our spiritual enemies for our defence ; 
grace as our preparatory to glory, and grace growing up till it ripen 
in glory. He only can mould us into a Divine frame; the great 
original can only derive the excellency of his own nature to us. We 
are too low, too lame, to lift up ourselves to it; too much in love 
with our own deformity, to admit of this beauty without a heavenly 
power inclining our desires for it, our affections to it, our willingness 
to be partakers of it. He can as soon set the beauty of holiness in 


208 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


a deformed heart, as the beauty of harmony in a confused mass, 
when he made the world. He can as soon cause the light of purity 
to rise out of the darkness of corruption, as frame glorious spirits out 
of the insufficiency of nothing. His beauty doth not decay; he 
hath as much in himself now as he had in’ his eternity; he is as 
ready to impart it, as he was at the creation; only we must wait 
upon him for it, and be content to have it by small measures and 
degrees. There is no fear of our sanctification, if we come to him 
as a God of holiness, since he is a God of peace, and the breach 
made by Adam is repaired by Christ (1 Thess. v. 23): “ And the 
very God of peace sanctify you wholly,” &. He restores the sanc- 
tifying Spirit which was withdrawn by the fall, as he is a God paci- 
fied, and his holiness righted by the Redeemer. The beauty of it 
appears in its smiles upon a man in Christ, and is as ready to im- 
part itself’ to the reconciled creature, as before justice was to punish 
the rebellious one. He loves to send forth the streams of this per- 
fection into created channels, more than any else. He did not de- 
sign the making the creature so powerful as he might, because 
power is not such an _excellency in his own nature, but as it is con- 
ducted and’ managed by some other excellency. Power is in- 
different, and may be used well or ill, according as the possessor 
of it is righteous or unrighteous. God makes not the creature so 
powerful as he might, but he delights to make the creature that 
waits upon him as holy as it can be ; beginning it in this world, and 
ripening it in the other. It is from him we must expect it, and 
from him that we must beg it, and draw arguments from the holi- 
ness of his nature, to move him to work holiness in our spirits; we 
cannot have a stronger plea. Purity is the favorite of his own na- 
ture, and delights itself in the resemblances of it in the creature. 
Let us also go to God, to preserve what he hath already wrought 
and imparted. As we cannot attain it, so we cannot maintain it 
without him. God gave it Adam, and he lost it; when God gives 
it us, we shall lose it without his influencing and preserving grace ; 
the channel will be without a stream, if the fountain do not bubble 
it forth; and the streams will vanish, if the fountain doth not con- 
stantly supply them. Let us apply ourselves to him for holiness, as 
he is a God glorious in holiness ; by this we honor God, and ad- 
vantage ourselves. 


DISCOURSE XII. 
ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 


Marx x. 18.—And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? There is none 
good but one, that is, God. 


THE words are part of a reply of our Saviour to the young man’s 
petition to him: a certain person came in haste, “running” as 
being eager for satisfaction, to entreat his directions, what he should 
do to inherit everlasting life ; the person is described only in general 
(ver. 17), ‘There came one,” a certain man: but Luke describes 
him by his dignity (Luke xviii. 18), “A certain ruler;” one of au- 
thority among the Jews. He desires of him an answer to a legal 
question, “ What he should do?” or, as Matthew hath it, ‘“ What 
good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life” (Matt. xix. 16)? 
He imagined everlasting felicity was to be purchased by the works 
of the law; he had not the least sentiments of faith: Christ’s answer 
implies, there was no hopes of the happiness of another world by 
the works of the law, unless they were perfect, and answerable to 
every divine precept. He doth not seem to have any ill, or hypo- 
critical intent in his address to Christ; not to tempt him, but 
to be instructed by him. He seems to come with an ardent desire, 
to be satisfied in his demand; he performed a solemn act of respect 
to him, he kneeled to him, yovuzeryjoas, prostrated himself upon the 
ground; besides, Christ is said (ver. 21) to love him, which had been 
inconsistent with the knowledge Christ had of the hearts and 
thoughts of men, and the abhorrence he had of hypocrites, had he 
been only acounterfeit in this question. But the first reply Christ 
makes to him, respects the title of “Good Master,” which this ruler 
gave him in his salutation. 

Ist, Some think, that Christ hereby would draw him to an ac- 
knowledgment of him as God; you acknowledge me “ good ;” how 
come you to salute me with so great a title, since you do not afford 
it to your greatest doctors? Lightfoot, in loc. observes, that the title 
of Rabbi bone is not in all the Talmud. You must own me to be 
God, since you own me to be “g00d:” goodness being a title only 
due, and properly belonging, to the Supreme Being. If you take 
me for a common man, with what conscience can you salute me in 
a Manner proper to God? since no man is “good,” no, not one, but 
the heart of man is evil continually. The Arians used this place, 
to back their denying the Deity of Christ: because, say they, he 
did not acknowledge himself “good,” therefore he did not acknow- 
ledge himself God. But he doth not here deny his Deity, but re- 


VOL. "= 14 


210 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


proves him for calling him good, when he had not yet confessed 
him to be more than a man.* You behold my flesh, but you con- 
sider not the fulness of my Deity; if you account me “good,” ac- 
count me God, and imagine me not to be a simple and a mere man|! 
He disowns not his own Deity, but allures the young man to a 
confession of it. Why callest thou me good, since thou dost not 
discover any apprehensions of my being more than a man? Though 
thou comest with a greater esteem to me than is commonly en- 
tertained of the doctors of the chair, why dost thou own me to be 
“good,” unless thou own me to be God? If Christ had denied 
himself in this speech to be “good,” he had rather entertained this 
person with a frown and a sharp reproof for giving him a title 
due to God alone, than have received him with that courtesy 
and complaisance as he did. Had he said, there is none “ good” 
but the Father, he had excluded himself; but in saying, there is 
none “ good” but God, he comprehends himself, 

9d. Others say, that Christ had no intention to draw him to an 
-_ acknowledgment of his Deity, but only asserts his divine authority 
or mission from God. For which interpretation Maldonat calls Cal- 
vin an Arianizer.. He doth not here assert the essence of his Deity, 
but the authority of his doctrine; as if he should have said, You do 
without ground give me the title of “good,” unless you believe I 
have a Divine commission for what I declare and act. Many do think 
me an impostor, an enemy of God, and a friend to devils; you must 
firmly believe that I am not so, as your rulers report me, but that I 
am sent of God, and authorized by him; you cannot else give me the 
title of good, but of wicked. And the reason they give for this in- 
terpretation, is, because it is a question, whether any of the apostles 
understood him, at this time, to be God, which seems to have no 
great strength in it; since not only the devil had publicly owned 
him to be the “ Holy One of God” (Luke iv. 84), but John the Bap- 
tist had borne record, that he was the “Son of God” (John 1, 32, 34) ; 
and before this time Peter had confessed him openly, in the hearing 
of the rest of the disciples, that he was ‘‘the Christ, the Son of the 
living God” (Matt, xvi. 16). But I think Parzeus’ interpretation is 
best, which takes in both those; either you are serious or deceitful in 
this address; if you are serious, why do you call me “good,” and 
make bold to fix so great a title upon one you have no higher thoughts 
of than a mere man? Christ takes occasion from hence, to assert God 
to be only and sovereignly “ good:” ‘There is none good but God,” 
God only hath the honor of absolute goodness, and none but God 
merits the name of “good.” A heathen could say much after the 
same manner; All other things are far from the nature of good; call 
none else good but God, for this would be a profane error: other 
things are only good in opinion, but have not the true substance of 
goodness: he is “good” in a more excellent way than any creature 
can be denominated “ good.’’P 

1. God is only originally good, good of himself. All created 
goodness is a rivulet from this fountain, but Divine goodness hath 

k Erasm. én loe. } Augustin, m Hensius in Matt. ® Calvin in loc. 
° Trismegist. Poemeend. cap, 2. P Eugubin, de Peron. Philos. lib. v. cap, 9 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GoD. 217 


no spring; God depends upon no other for his goodness; he hath it 
in, and of, himself: man hath no goodness from himself, God hath no 
goodness from without himself: his goodness is no more derived from 
another than his being: if we were good by any external thing, that 
thing must be in being before him, or after him; if before him, he 
was not then himself from eternity ; if after him, he was not good 
in himself from eternity. The end of his creating things, then, was 
not to confer a goodness upon his creatures, but to partake of a good- 
ness from his creatures. God is good by and in himself, since all 
things are only good by him; and all that goodness which is in 
creatures, 1s but the breathing of his own goodness upon them: they 
have all their loveliness from the same hand they have their being 
from. Though by creation God was declared good, yet he was not 
made good by any, or by all the creatures. He partakes of none, 
but all things partake of him. He is so good, that he gives all, and 
receives nothing; only good, because nothing is good but by him: 
nothing hath a goodness but from him. 

2. God only is infinitely good. A boundless goodness that knows 
no limits, a goodness as infinite as his essence, not only good, but 
best; not only good, but goodness itself, the supreme inconceivable 
goodness. All things else are but little particles of God, small sparks 
from this immense flame, sips of goodness to this fountain. Nothing 
that is good by his influence can equal him who is good by himself: 
derived goodness can never equal primitive goodness. Divine good- 
ness communicates itself to a vast number of creatures in various 
degrees; to angels, glorified spirits, men on earth, to every creature: 
and when it hath communicated all that the present world is capable 
of, there is still less displayed, than left to enrich another world. Al! 
' possible creatures are not capable of exhausting the wealth, the 
treasures, that Divine bounty 1s filled with. 

3. God is only perfectly good, because only infinitely good. He 
is good without indigence, because he hath the whole nature of good- 
ness, not only some beams that may admit of increase of degree. 
As in him is the whole nature of entity, so in him is the whole na- 
ture of excellency. As nothing hath an absolute perfect being but 
God, so nothing hath an absolutely perfect goodness but God; as the 
sun hath a perfection of heat in it, but what is warmed by the sun 
is but imperfectly hot, and equals not the sun in that perfection of 
heat wherewith it is naturally endued. The goodness of God is the 
measure and rule of goodness in everything else. 

4. God only isimmutably good. Other things may be perpetually 
good by supernatural power, but not immutably good in their own 
nature. Other things are not so good, but they may be bad; God 
is So good, that he cannot be bad. It was the speech of a philoso- 
pher, that it was a hard thing to find a good man, yea, impossible : 
but though it were possible to find a good man, he would be good 
but for some moment, or a short time: for though he should be good 
at this instant, it was above the nature of man to continue in a habit 
of goodness, without going awry and warping. But “the goodness 
of God endureth forever” (Ps. lii. 1). God always glitters in good- 

4 Eugubin, de Peron. Philos. lib. v. cap. 9. p. 97. col. 


212 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


ness, aS the sun, which the heathens called the visible image of the 
Divinity, doth with light. There is not such a perpetual light in the 
sun as there is a fulness of goodness in God; “no variableness” in 
him, as he is the “Father of Lights” (James i. 17). 

Before I come to the doctrine, that 1s, the chief scope of the words, 
some remarks may be made upon the young man’s question and car- 
riage: ‘What must I do to inherit eternal life ?” 

1. The opinion of gaining eternal life by the outward observation 
of the law, will appear very unsatisfactory to an inquisitive con- 
science. This ruler affirmed, and certainly did confidently believe, 
that he had fulfilled the law (ver. 20): ‘All this have 1 observed 
from my youth;” yet he had not any full satisfaction in his own 
conscience; his heart misgave, and started upon some sentiments in 
him, that something else was required, and what he had done might 
be too weak, too short to shoot heaven’s lock for him. And to that 
purpose he comes to Christ, to receive instructions for the piecing up 
whatsoever was defective. Whosoever will consider the nature of 
- God, and the relation of a creature, cannot with reason think, that 
eternal life was of itself due from God as a recompense to Adam, 
had he persisted in a state of innocence. Who can think so great a 
reward due, for having performed that which a creature in that rela- 
tion was obliged to do? Can any man think another obliged to con- 
vey an inheritance of a thousand pounds per annum upon his payment 
of a few farthings, unless any compact appears to support such a 
conceit? And if it were not to be expected in the integrity of na- 
ture, but only from the goodness of God, how can it be expected 
since the revolt of man, and the universal deluge of natural corrup- 
tion? God owes nothing to the holiest creature; what he gives is a 
present from his bounty, not the reward of the creature’s merit. And ~ 
the apostle defies all creatures, from the greatest to the least, from 
the tallest angel to the lowest shrub, to bring out any one creature 
that hath first given to God (Rom. xi. 35); ““Who hath first given 
to him, and it shall be recompensed to him again?” The duty of the 
creature, and God’s gift of eternal life, is not a bargain and sale. God 
gives to the creature, he doth not properly repay; for he that repays 
hath received something of an equal value and worth before. When 
God crowns angels and men, he bestows upon them purely what is his 
own, not what is theirs by merit and and natural obligation: though 
indeed, what God gives by virtue of a promise made before, is, upon 
the performance of the condition, due by gracious obligation. God 
was not indebted to man in innocence, but every man’s conscience 
may now mind him that he is not upon the same level as in the state 
of integrity; and that he cannot expect anything from God, as the 
salary of his merit, but the free gift of Divine liberality. Man is 
obliged to the practice of what is good, both from the excellency of 
the Divine precepts, and the duty he owes to God; and cannot, 
without some declaration from God, hope for any other reward, than 
the satisfaction of having well acquitted himself. 

2. Itis the disease of human nature, since its corruption, to hope 
for eternal life by the tenor of the covenant of works. Though this 

* Amyrant, Morale. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 218 


ruler’s conscience was not thoroughly satisfied with what he had 
done, but imagined he might, for all that, fall short of eternal life, 

et he still hugs the imagination of obtaining it by doing (ver. 17); 
“ What shall I do, that I may inherit eternal life?” This is natural 
to corrupted man. Cain thought to be accepted for the sake of his 
sacrifice; and, when he found his mistake, he was so weary of seek- 
ing happiness by doing, that he would court misery by murdering. 
All men set too high a value upon their own services. Sinful crea 
tures would fain make God a debtor to them, and be purchasers of 
felicity: they would not have it conveyed to them by God’s sover- 
eign bounty, but by an obligation of justice upon the value of their 
works. The heathens thought God would treat men according to 
the merit of their services; and it is no wonder they should have 
this sentiment, when the Jews, educated by God in a wiser school, 
were wedded to that notion. The Pharisees were highly fond of it: 
it was the only argument they used in prayer for Divine blessing. 
You have one of them boasting of his frequency in fasting, and his 
exactness in paying his tithes (Luke xix. 12); as if God had been 
beholden to him, and could not, without manifest wrong, deny him 
his demand. And Paul confesseth it to be his own sentiment before 
his conversion; he accounted this “ righteousness of the law gain to 
him” (Phil. ii. 7); he thought, by this, to make his market with 
God. The whole nation of the Jews affected it,s compassing sea and 
land to make out a righteousness of their own, as the Pharisees did 
to make proselytes. ‘The Papists follow their steps, and dispute for 
justitication by the merit of works, and find out another key of 
works of supererogation, to unlock heaven’s gate, than whatever the 
Seripture informed us of. It is from hence, also; that men are so 
ready to make faith, as a work, the cause of our justification. Man 
foolishly thinks he hath enough to set up himself after he hath 
proved bankrupt, and lost all his estate. This imagination is born 
with us, and the best Christians may find some sparks of it in them- 
selves, when there are springings up of joy in their hearts, upon the 
more close performance of one duty than of another; as if they had 
wiped off their scores, and given God a satisfaction for their former 
neglects. “ We have forsaken all, and followed thee,” was the boast 
of his disciples: ‘ What shall we have, therefore?” was a branch of 
this root (Matt. xix. 27). Eternal life is a gift, not by any obliga- 
tion of right, but an abundance of goodness ; it is owing, not to the 
dignity of our works, but the magnificent bounty of the Divine na- 
ture, and must be sued for by the title of God’s promise, not by the 
title of the creature’s services. We may observe, 

3. How insufficient are some assents to Divine truth, and some ex- 
pressions of affection to Christ, without the practice of christian pre- 
cepts. This man addressed Christ with a profound respect, acknow- 
ledging him more than an ordinary person, with a more reverential 
carriage than we read any of his disciples paid to him in the days of 
his flesh ; he fell down at his feet, kissed his knees, as the custom 
was, when they would testify the great respect they had to any emi- 
nent person, especially to their rabbins. All this some think to be 


* Rom, x. 3. “Going about to establish their own righteousness.” 


214 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


included in the word yorunerijouc.t He seems to acknowledge him 
the Messiah by giving him the title of “Good,” a title they did not 
give to their doctors of the chair; he breathes out his opinion, that 
he was able to instruct him beyond the ability of the law; he came 
with a more than ordinary affection to him, and expectation of ad- 
vantage from him, evident by his departing sad, when his expecta- 
tions were frustrated by his own perversity ; it was a sign he had a 
high esteem of him from whom he could not part without marks of 
his grief. What was the cause of his refusing the instructions he pre- 
tended such an affection to receive? He had possessions in the world. 
How soon do a few drops of worldly advantages quench the first sparks 
of an ill-grounded love to Christ! How vain is a complimental and 
cringing devotion, without a supreme preference of God, and valuation 
of Christ above every outward allurement. We may observe this, 
4, We should never admit anything to be ascribed to us, which is 
proper to God. “ Why callest thou me good? There is none good 
but one, that is, God.” If you do not acknowledge me God, aseribe 
not to me the title of Good. It takes off all those titles which fawn- 
ing flatterers give to men, “ mighty,” “invincible” to princes, “ holi- 
ness’ to the pope. We call one another good, without considering 
how evil; and wise, without considering how foolish; mighty, with- 
out considering how weak, and knowing, without considering how 
ignorant. Noman, but hath more of wickedness than goodness; 
of ignorance than knowledge; of weakness than strength. God is 
a jealous God of his own honor; he will not have the creature share 
with him in his royal titles. It isa part of idolatary to give men 
the titles which are due to God; a kind of a worship of the creatnre 
together with the Creator. Worms will not stand out, but assault 
Herod in his purple, when he usurps the prerogative of God, and 
prove stiff and mvincible vindicators of their Creator’s honor, when 
summoned to arms by the Creator's word (Acts xii. 22, 28). 
Doctrine. The observation which I intend to prosecute, 1s this :— 
Pure and perfect goodness is only the royal prerogative of God; 
goodness is a choice perfection of the Divine nature. This is the 
true and genuine character of God; he is good, he 1s goodness, good 
in himself, good in his essence, good in the highest degree, possessing 
whatsoever is comely, excellent, desirable; the highest good, because 
first good: whatsoever is perfect goodness, is God; whatsoever is 
truly goodness in any creature, is a resemblance of God." All the 
names of God are comprehended in this one of good. All gifts, all 
variety of goodness, are contained in him as one common good. He 
is the efficient cause of all good, by an overflowing goodness of his 
nature; he refers all things to himself, as the end, for the represen- 
tation of his own goodness; “Truly God is good” (Ps. Ixxiii. 1). 
Certainly, it is an undoubted truth; it is written in his works of na- 
ture, and his acts of grace (Exod. xxxiv. 6). “He is abundant in 
goodness.” Andevery thing is a memorial, not of some few sparks, 
but of his greater goodness (Ps. cxlv. 7). This is often celebrated in 
the Psalms, and men invited more than once, to sing forth the 
praises of it (Ps. cvil. 8, 15, 21, 81). It may better be admired than 
+ Ver. 17. Lightfoot in Joe. » Ficin. in Dionys. de Divin. Nom. cap. 511. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 915 


sufficiently spoken of, or thought of, as it merits. It is discovered 
in all his works, as the goodness of a tree in all its fruits; it is easy 
to be seen, and more pleasant to be contemplated. In general, 

1. All nations in the world have acknowledged God good; 7% 
'Ayubov was one of the names the Platonists expressed him by; 
and good and God, are almost the same words in our language. All 
as readily consented in the notion of his goodness, as in that of his 
Deity. Whatsoever divisions or disputes there were among them in 
the other perfections of God, they all agreed in this without dispute, 
saith Synesius. One calls him Venus, in regard of his loveliness.* 
Another calls him ”£gwt« love, as being the band which ties all things 
together.y No perfection of the Divine nature is more eminently, 
nor more speedily visible in the whole book of the creation, than this. 
His greatness shines not in any part of it, where his goodness doth 
not as gloriously glister: whatsoever is the instrument of his work, 
as his power; whatsoever is the orderer of his work, as his wisdom; 
yet nothing can be adored as the motive of his work, but the good- 
ness of his nature. This only could induce him to resolve to create: 
his wisdom then steps in, to dispose the methods of what he resolved ; 
and his power follows to execute, what his wisdom hath disposed, 
and his goodness designed. His power in making, and his wis- 
dom in ordering, are subservient to his goodness; and this good- 
ness, which is the end of the creation, is as visible to the eyes of men, 
as legible to the understanding of men, as his power in forming 
them, and his wisdom in tuning them. And as the book of creation, 
so the records of his government must needs acquaint them with a 
great part of it, when they have often beheld him, stretching out his 
hand, to supply the indigent; relieve the oppressed, and punish the 
oppressors, and give them, in their distresses, what might “ fill their 
hearts with food and gladness.” It is this the apostle (Rom. i. 20, 
21,) means by his Godhead, which he links with his eternity and 
power, as clearly seen in the things that are made, as in a pure glass, 
“ For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world, are 
clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his 
eternal power and Godhead.” The Godhead which comprehends the 
whole nature of God as discoverable to his creatures, was not known, 
yea, was impossible to be known, by the works of creation. There had 
been nothing then reserved to be manifested in Christ: but his good- 
ness, which is properly meant there by his Godhead, was as clearly 
visible as his power. The apostle upbraids them with their unthank- 
fulness, and argues their inexcusableness, because the arm of his 
power in creation made no due impression of fear upon their spirits, 
nor the beams of his goodness wrought in them sufficient sentiments 
of gratitude. Their not glorifying God, was a contempt of the for- 
mer; and their not being thankful, was a slight of the latter. God 
is the object of honor, as he is powerful, and the object of thankful- 
ness properly as he is bountiful. All the idolary of the heathens, 
is a clear testimony of their common sentiment of the goodness of 
God: since the more eminently useful any person was in some ad- 
vantageous invention for the benefit of mankind, they thought he 

= Empedoeles. y Hesiod 


& 


216 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


merited a rank in the number of their deities. The Italians esteerned 
Pithagoras a god, because he was lus Ogundiaros :% to be good and 
useful, was an approximation to the Divine nature. Hence it was, 
that when the Lystrians saw a resemblance of the Divine goodness 
in the charitable and miraculous cure of one of their crippled citi- 
zens, presently they mistook Paul and* Barnabas for gods, and in- 
ferred from thence their right to divine worship, inquiring into noth- 
mg else but the visible character of their goodness and usefulness, 
to capacitate them for the honor of a sacrifice (Acts xiv. 8-11). 
Hence it was, that they adored those creatures that were a common 
benefit, as the sun and moon, which must be founded upon a pre- 
existent notion, not only of a Being, but of the bounty and good- 
ness of God, which was naturally implanted in them, and legible in 
all God’s works, And the more beneficial anything was to them, 
and the more sensible advantages they received from it, the higher 
station they gave it in the rank of their idols, and bestowed upon it 
a more solemn worship: an absurd mistake to think everything that 
was sensibly good to them, to be God, clothing himself in such a 
form to be adored by them. And upon this account the Egyptians 
worshipped God under the figure of an ox; and the East Indians, 
im some parts of their country, deify a heifer, intimating the good- 
ness of God, as their nourisher and preserver, in giving them corn, 
whereof the ox is an instrument in serving for ploughing, and pre- 
paring the ground. 

2. ‘The notion of goodness is inseparable from the notion of a 
God. We cannot own the existence of God, but we must confess 
also the goodness of his nature. Hence, the apostle gives to his 
goodness the title of his Godhead, asif goodness and godhead were 
convertible terms (Rom. i. 20). As it is indissolubly linked with the 
being of a Deity, so it cannot be severed from the notion of it: we 
as soon undeify him by denying him good, as by denying him great: 
Optimus, Maximus, the best, greatest, was the name whereby the Ro- 
mans entitled Him. His nature is as good, as it is majestic; so doth 
the Psalmist join them (Ps. exlv. 6, 7), ‘I will declare my great- 
ness; they shall abundantly utter the memory of thy great good- 
ness.” ‘T'hey considered his goodness before his greatness, in putting 
Optimus belore Maximus ; greatness without sweetness, is an unruly 
and affrighting monster in the world; like a vast turbulent sea, al- 
ways casting out mire and dirt. Goodness is the brightness and love- 
liness of our majestical Creator. To fancy a God without it, is to 
fancy a miserable, scanty, narrow-hearted, savage God, and so an 
unlovely, and horrible being: for he is not a God that is not good: 
he is not a God that is not the highest good: infinite goodness is 

more necessary to, and more straitly joined with an infinite Deity, 
than infinite power and infinite wisdom: we cannot conceive him 
God, unless we conceive him the highest good, having nothing supe- 
rior to himself in goodness, as he hath nothing superior to himself 
in excellency and perfection. No man can possibly form a notion 
of God in his mind, and yet form a notion of something better than 
God; for whoever thinks anything better than God, fancieth a God 
2 Iamblych. Vit. Pythag. lib. i. col. 6. p. 48. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 217 


with some defect: by how much the better he thinks that thing to 
be, by so much the more imperfect he makes God in his thoughts. 
This notion of the goodness of God was so natural, that some philo- 
sophers and others, being startled at the evil they saw in the world, 
fancied, besides a good God, an evil principle, the author of all pun- 
ishments in the world. This was ridiculous; for those two must be 
of equal power, or one inferior to the other ; if equal, the good could 
do nothing, but the evil one would restrain him; and the evil one 
could do nothing, but the good one would contradict him; so they 
would be always contending, and never conquering: if one were in- 
ferior to the other, then there would be nothing but what that superior 
ordered. Good, if the good one were superior; and nothing but evil, 
if the bad one were superior. In the prosecution of this, let us see. 

I What this goodness is. II. Some propositions concerning the 
nature of it. III. That God is good. IV. The manifestation of it 
in creation, providence, and redemption. V. The use. 

I. What this goodness is. There is a goodness of being, which is 
the natural perfection of a thing ; there is the goodness of will, which 
is the holiness, and righteousness of a person; there is the good- 
ness of the hand, which we call liberality, or beneficence, a doing 
good to others. 

1. We mean not by this, the goodness of his essence, or the per- 
fection of his nature. God is thus good, because his nature is in- 
finitely perfect; he hath all things requisite to the completing of a 
most perfect and sovereign Being. All good meets in his essence, 
as all water meets in the ocean. Under this notion all the attributes 
of God, which are requisite to so illustrious a Being, are compre- 
hended. All things that are, have a goodness of being in them, de- 
rived to them by the power of God, as they are creatures; so the 
devil is good, as he is a creature of God’s making: he hath a natu- 
ral goodness, but not a moral goodness: when he fell from God, he 
retained his natural goodness as a creature ; because he did not cease 
to be, he was not reduced to that nothing, from whence he was 
drawn; but he ceased to be morally good, being stripped of his 
righteousness by his apostasy; as a creature, he was God’s work; as 
a creature, he remains still God’s work; and, therefore, as a creature, 
remains still good, in regard of his created being. The more of be- 
ing anything hath, the more of this sort of natural goodness it hath ; 
and so the devil hath more of this natural goodness than men have; 
because he hath more marks of the excellency of God upon him, in 
regard of the greatness of his knowledge, and the extent of his 
power, the largeness of his capacity, and the acuteness of his under- 
standing, which are natural perfections belonging to the nature of 
an angel, though he hath lost his moral perfections. God is sove-. 
reignly and infinitely good in this sort of goodness. He is unsearch 
ably perfect (Job xi. 7); nothing is wanting to his essence, that is 
necessary to the perfection of it; yet this is not that which the Scrip- 
ture expresseth under the term of goodness, but a perfection of 
God's nature as related to us, and which he poureth forth upon 
all his creatures, as goodness which flows from this natural per- 
fection of the Deity. 


218 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


2. Nor is it the same with the blessedness of God, but something 
flowing from his blessedness. Were he not first infinitely blessed, 
and full in himself, he could not be infinitely good and diffusive to 
us; had he not an infinite abundance in his own nature, he could 
not be overflowing to his creatures; had not the sun a fulness of 
light in itseif, and the sea a vastness of water, the one could 
' not enrich the world with its beams, nor the other fill every creek 
with its waters. 

3. Nor is it the same with the holiness of God. The holiness of 
God is the rectitude of his nature, whereby he is pure, and without 
spot in himself; the goodness of God is the efflux of his will, where- 
by he is beneficial to his creatures: the holiness of God is manifest 
in his rational creatures; but the goodness of God extends to all the 
works of his hands. His holiness beams most in his law; his good- 
ness reacheth to everything that had a being from him (Ps. cxlv. 9): 
“The Lord is good to all.” And though he be said in the same 
Psalm (ver. 17) to be “holy in all his works,” it is to be understood 
_of his bounty, bountiful in all his works; the Hebrew word signify- 
ing both holy and lhberal, and the margin of the Bible reads it 
‘merciful’ or “ bountiful.” 

4, Nor is this goodness of God the same with the mercy of God. 
Goodness extends to more objects than mercy ; goodness stretcheth 
itself out to all the works of his hands; mercy extends only toa 
miserable object; for it is joined with a sentiment of pity, occa- 
sioned by the calamity of another. The mercy of God is exer- 
cised about those that merit pnnishment; the goodness of Ged is 
exercised upon objects that have not merited anything contrary to 
the acts of his bounty. Creation is an act of goodness, not of 
mercy ; providence in governing some part of the world, is an act 
of goodness, not of mercy.* The heavens, saith Austin, need the 
goodness of God to govern them, but not the mercy of God to re- 
lieve them; the earth is full of the misery of man, and the com- 
passions of God; but the heavens need not the mercy of God to 
pity them, because they are not miserable; though they need the 
goodness and power of God to sustain them; because, as creatures, 
they are impotent without him. God’s goodness extends to the 
angels, that kept their standing, and to man in innocence, who in 
that state stood not in need of mercy. Goodness and mercy are dis- 
tinct, though mercy be a branch of goodness; there may be a mani- 
festation of goodness, though none of mercy. Some think Christ 
had been incarnate, had not man fallen: ina it been so, there had 
been a manifestation of goodness to our nature, but not of mercy, 
because sin had not made our natures miserable. The devils are 
monuments of God’s creating goodness, but not of his pardoning 
compassions. The grace of God respects the rational creature; 
mercy the miserable creature; goodness all his creatures, brutes, and 
the senseless plants, as well as reasonable man. 

5. By goodness, is meant the bounty of God. This is the notion 
of goodness in the world; when we say a good man, we mean either 
a holy man in his life, or a charitable and liberal man in the man- 

@ Lombard lib. iv. distinct. 46. p. 286. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 919 


agement of his goods. A righteous man, and a good man, are dis- 
tinguished (Rom. v. 7). “For scarcely for a righteous man will one 
die; yet for a good man one would even dare to die ;” for an inno- 
cent man, one as innocent of the crime as himself would scarce ven- 
ture his life; but for a good man, a liberal, tender-hearted man, that 
had been a common good in the place where he lived, or had done 
another as great a benefit as life itself amounts to, a man out of grati- 
tude might dare to die. ‘The goodness of God is his inclination to 
deal well and bountifully with his creatures.” It is that whereby 
he wills there should be something besides himself for his own glory. 
God is good himself, and to himself, 2. e. highly amiable to himself ; 
and, therefore, some define it a perfection of God, whereby he loves 
himself and his own excellency ; but as it stands in relation to his 
creatures, it is that perfection of God whereby he delights in his 
works, and is beneficial to them. God is the highest goodness, be- 
cause he doth not act for his own profit, but for his creatures’ wel- 
fare, and the manifestation of his own goodness. He sends out his 
beams, without receiving any addition to himself, or substantial ad- 
vantage from his creatures. It is from this perfection that he loves 
whatsoever is good, and that is whatsoever he hath made, “‘for every 
creature of God is good” (1 Tim. iv. 4); every creature hath some 
communications from him, which cannot be without some affection 
to them ; every creature hath a footstep of Divine goodness upon it; 
God, therefore, loves that goodness in the creature, else he would not 
love himself. God hates no creature, no, not the devils and damned, 
as creatures; he is not an enemy to them, as they are the works of 
his hands; he is properly an enemy, that doth simply and absolutely 
wish evil to another; but God doth not absolutely wish evil to the 
damned ; that justice that he inflicts upon them, the deserved pun- 
ishment of their sin, is part of his goodness, as shall afterwards be 
shown.¢ This is the most pleasant perfection of the Divine nature ; 
his creating power amazes us; his conducting wisdom astonisheth 
us; his goodness, as furnishing us with all conveniences, delights us; 
and renders both his amazing power, and astonishing wisdom, de- 
lightful to us. As the sun, by effecting things, is an emblem of 
God’s power; by discovering things to us, is an emblem of his wis- 
dom; but by refreshing and comforting us, is an emblem of his 
goodness ; and without this refreshing virtue it communicates to us, 
we should take no pleasure in the creatures it produceth, nor in the 
beauties it discovers. As God is great and powerful, he is the ob- 
ject of our understanding; but as good and bountiful, he is the ob- 
ject of our love and desire. 

6. The goodness of God comprehends all his attributes. All the 
acts of God are nothing else but the effluxes of his goodness, distin- 
guished by several names, according to the objects it is exercised 
about. As the sea, though it be one mass of water, yet we distin- 
guish it by several names, according to the shores it washeth, and 
beats upon; as the British and German Ocean, though all be one 
sea. When Moses longed to see his glory, God tells him, he would 
give him a prospect of his goodness (Hx. xxxiii. 19): “I will make 

» Coceei. sum. p. 50. © Cajetan in secund. secunda. Qu. 34. Ar. 3. 


220 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


all my goodness to pass before thee.” His goodness is his glory and 
Godhead, as much as is delightfully visible to his creatures, and 
whereby he doth benefit man: “I will cause my goodness,” or “ come- 
liness,” as Calvin renders it, ‘‘to pass before thee ;” what is this, but 
the train of all his lovely perfections springing from his goodness? 
the whole catalogue of mercy, grace, long-suffering, abundance of 
truth, summed up in this one word (Ex. xxxiy. 6). All are streams 
from this fountain ; he could be none of this, were he not first good. 
When it confers happiness without merit, it is grace; when it be- 
stows happiness against merit, it is mercy; when he bears with pro- 
voking rebels, it is long-suffering ; when he performs his promise, it 
is truth; when it meets with a person to whom it is not obliged, it 
is grace; when he meets with a person in the world, to which he 
hath obliged himself by promise, it is truth ;4 when it commiserates 
a distressed person, it is pity ; when it supplies an indigent person, 
it is bounty ; when it succors an innocent person, it is righteousness; 
and when it pardons a penitent person, it is mercy ; all summed up 
in this one name of goodness; and the Psalmist expresseth the same 
sentiment in the same words (Ps. exlv. 7, 8): ‘They shall abundantly 
utter the memory of thy great goodness, and shall sing of thy right- 
eousness. ‘T’he Lord is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, 
and of great mercy; the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies 
are over his works.” He is first good, and then compasssionate. 
Righteousness is often in Scripture taken, not for justice, but charita- 
bleness ; this attribute, saith one,¢ is so full of God, that it doth deify 
all the rest, and verify the adorableness of him. His wisdom might 
contrive against us, his power bear too hard upon us; one might be 
too hard for an ignorant, and the other too mighty for an impotent 
creature ; his holiness would scare an impure and guilty creature, 
but his goodness conducts them all for us, and makes them all amia- 
ble to us; whatever comeliness they have in the eye of a creature, 
whatever comfort they afford to the heart of a creature, we are ob- 
liged for all to his goodness. This puts all the rest upon a delight- 
ful exercise; this makes his wisdom design for us, and this makes 
his power to act for us; this veils his holiness from affrighting us, 
and this spirits his mercy to relieve us: all his acts towards man, 
are but the workmanship of this.£ What moved him at first to cre- 
ate the world out of nothing, and erect so noble a creature as man, 
endowed with such excellent gifts; was it not his goodness? what 
made him separate his Son to be a sacrifice for us, after we had en- 
deavored to rase out the first marks of his favor; was it not a strong 
bubbling of goodness? What moves him to reduce a fallen crea- 
ture to the due sense of his duty, and at last bring him to an eter- 
nal felicity ; is it not, only his goodness? This is the captain attri- 
bute that leads the rest to act. This attends them, and spirits them 
in all his ways of acting. This is the complement and perfection of 
all his works; had it not been for this, which set all the rest on work, 
nothing of his wonders had been seen in creation, nothing of his 
compassions had been seen in redemption. 


4 Herle upon Wisdom, ac 5. pp. 41, 42. e Ingelo Bentivolio, and Uran. Book 
IV. pp. 260, 261. Daille, Melang. Part II. pp. 704, 705. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 221 


IJ. The second thing is, some propositions to explain the nature 
of this goodness. 

1. He is good by his own essence. God is not only good in his 
essence, but good by his essence; the essence of “every created 
being is’ good ;” so the unerring God pronounced everything which 
he had made (Gen. 1. 81). The essence of the worst creatures, yea, 
of the impure and savage devils, is good; but they are not good 
per essentiam, for then they could not be bad, malicious, and oppres- 
sive. God is good, as he is God; and therefore good by himself, and 
from himself, not by participation from another; he made everything 
good, but none made him good; since his goodness was not received 
from another, he is good by his own nature. He could not receive 
it from the things he created, they are later than he; since they re- 
ceived all from him, they could bestow nothing on him; and no God 
preceded him, in whose inheritance and treasures of goodness, he 
could be a successor; he is absolutely his own goodness, he needed 
none to make him good; but all things needed him, to be good 
by him. Creatures are good by being made so by him, and cleay- 
ing to him; he is good without cleaving to any goodness without 
him. Goodness is not a quality in him, but a nature; nota habit 
added to his essence, but his essence itself; he is not first God, and 
then afterwards good; but he is good as he is God; his essence, 
being one and the same, is formally and equally God and goods 
"Aviayabor, “oood of himself,’ was one of the names the Plato- 
nists gave him. He is essentially good in his own nature, and not 
by any outward action which follows his essence. He is an inde- 
pendent Being, and hath nothing of goodness or happiness from any- 
thing without him, or anything he doth act about. If he were not 
good by his essence, he could not be eternally good, he could not be 
the first good; he would have something before him, from whence 
he derived that goodness wherewith he is possessed; nor could he 
be perfectly good, for he could not be equally good to that from 
whom he derived his goodness; no star, no splendid body, that de- 
rives light from the sun, doth equal that sun by which it is enlight- 
ened. Hence his goodness must be infinite, and circumscribed by 
no limits; the exercise of his goodness may be limited by himself ; 
but his goodness, the principle, cannot; for since his essence is infi- 
nite, and his goodness is not distinguished from his essence, it is in- 
finite also; if it were limited, it were finite; he cannot be bounded 
by anything without him; if so, then he were not God, because he 
would have something superior to him, to put bars in his way; if 
there were anything to fix him, it must be a good or evil being; 
good it cannot be, for it is the property of goodness to encourage 
goodness, not to bound it; evil it cannot be, for then it would ex- 
tinguish goodness, as well as limit it; it would not be content with 
the circumscribing it, without destroying it; for it is the nature of 
every contrary, to endeavor the destruction of its opposite. He is 
essentially good by his own essence; therefore, good of himself; 
therefore, eternally good; and therefore, abundantly good. 

2. God is the prime and chief goodness. Being good per se, and 

& Ficini. Epist. lib. xi. epist. 30. 


222, CHARNOCK ON THE: ATTRIBUTES. 


by his own essence, he must needs be the chief goodness, in whom 
there can be nothing but good, from whom there can proceed nothing 
but good, to whom all good whatsoever must be referred, as the final 
cause of all good. As he is the chief Being, so he is the chief good; 
and as we rise by steps from the existence of created things, to ac- 
knowledge one Supreme Being, which is God, so we mount by steps 
from the consideration of the goodness of created things, to acknow]- 
edge one Infinite Ocean of sovereign goodness, whence the streams 
of created goodness are derived. When we behold things that par- 
take of goodness from another, we must acquiesce in one that hath 
goodness by participation from no other, but originally from himself, 
and therefore supremely in himself above all other things: so that, 
as nothing greater and more majestic can be imagined, so also 
nothing better and more excellent can be conceived than God. 
Nothing can add to him, or make him better than he is; nothing 
can detract from him, to make him worse; nothing can be added to 
him, nothing can be severed from him; no created good can render 
him more excellent; no evil, from any creature, can render him 
less excellent; ‘‘our goodness extends not to him” (Ps. xvi, 2); 
“wickedness may hurt a man, as we are, and our righteousness may 
profit the son of man; but, if we be righteous, what give we to Him, 
or what receives he at our hands” (Job xxxv. 7, 8)? as he hath no 
superior in place above him, so, being chief of all, he cannot be made 
better by any inferior to him. How can he be made better by any 
that hath from himself all that he hath? The goodness of a creature 
may be changed, but the goodness of the Creator is immutable; 
he is always like himself, so good that he cannot. be evil, as he is so 
blessed that he cannot be miserable. Nothing is good but God, be- 
cause nothing is of itself but God; as all things, being from nothing, 
are nothing in comparison of God, so all things, being from nothing, 
are scanty and evil in comparison of God. If anything had been, 
ex Deo, God being the matter of it, it had been as good as God is; 
but since the principle, whence all things were drawn, was nothing, 
though the efficient cause by which they were extracted from nothing 
was God, they are as nothing in goodness, and not estimable in com- 
parison of God (Ps. lxxii. 25): ‘‘ Whom have I in heaven but thee?” 
&c. God is all good; every creature hath a distinct variety of good- 
ness: God distinctly pronounced every day’s work in the creation 
“good.” Food communicates the goodness of its nourishing virtue 
to our bodies; flowers the goodness of their odors to our smell; 
every creature a goodness of comeliness to our sight; plants the 
goodness of healing qualities for our cure; and all derive from them- 
selves a goodness of knowledge, objectively to our understandings. 
The sun, by one sort of goodness, warms us; metals enrich us; liv- 
ing creatures sustain us, and delight us by another; all those have 
distinct kinds of goodness, which are eminently summed up in God, 
and are all but parts of his immense goodness. It is he that en- 
lightens us by his sun, nourisheth us by bread (Matt. iv. 4): “It is 
not by bread alone that we live, but by the word of God.” It is all 
but his own supreme goodness, conveyed to us through those varie- 
ties of conduit-pipes. ‘God is all good;” other things are good in 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD 223 


their kind; as, a good man, a good angel, a good tree, a good plant; 
but God hath a good of all kinds eminently in his nature. He is no 
less all-good, than he is almighty, and all-knowing; as the sun con- 
tains in it all the light, and more light than is m all the clearest 
bodies in the world, so doth God contain in himself all the good, 
and more good than is in the richest creatures. Nothing is good, 
but as it resembles him; as nothing is hot, but as it resembles fire, 
the prime subject of heat. God is omnipotent, therefore no good 
can be wanting to him. If he were destitute of any which he could 
not have, he were not almighty: he is so good, that there is no mix- 
ture of anything which can be called not good in him; everything 
besides him wants some good, which others have. Nothing can be 
so evil asGod is good. There can be no evil but there is some mix- 
ture of good with it; no nature so evil but there is some spark of good- 
ness in it: but God is a good which hath no taint of evil; nothing 
can be so supreme an evil as God is supreme goodness. He is only 
good, without capacity of increase; he is all good, and unmixedly 
good; none good but God: a goodness, like the sun, that hath all 
light, and no darkness. That is the second thing; he is the su- 
preme and chief goodness. 

8. This goodness is communicative. None so communicatively 
good as God. As the notion of God includes goodness, so the no- 
tion of goodness includes diffusiveness ; without goodness he would 
cease to be a Deity, and without diffusiveness he would cease to be 
good. The being good is necessary to the being God; for goodness 
is nothing else, in the notion of it, but a strong inclination to do 
good; either to find or make an object, wherein to exercise itself, 
according to the propension of its own nature; and it is an inclina- 
tion of communicating itself, not for its own interest, but the good 
of the object it pitcheth upon. Thus God is good by nature; and 
his nature is not without activity; he acts conveniently to his own 
nature (Ps. cxix. 68): “Thou art good, and dost good.” And 
nothing accrues to him, by the communications of himself to others, 
since his blessedness was as great before the frame of any creature 
as ever it was since the erecting of the world; so that the goodness 
of Christ himself increaseth not the lustre of his happiness (Ps. xvi. 
2): ‘My goodness extends not to thee.” He is not of a niggardly 
and envious nature; he is too rich to have any cause to envy, and 
too good to have any will to envy; he is as liberal as he is rich, ac- 
cording to the capacity of the object about which his goodness is 
exercised. The Divine goodness, being the supreme goodness, is 
goodness in the highest degree of activity ; not an idle, enclosed, 
pent up goodness, as a spring shut up, or a fountain sealed, bubbling 
up within itself, but bubbling out of itself: a fountain of gardens to 
water every part of his creation; ‘“ He is an ointment poured forth” 
(Cant. i. 3): nothing spreads itself more thar oil, and takes up a 
larger space wheresoever it drops. It may Le no ‘less said of the 
goodness of God, as it is of the fulness of Christ (Eph. i. 23); ‘“ He 
fills all in all:” he fills rational creatures with understanding, sens!- 
tive nature with vigor and motion, the whole world with beauty and 
sweetness. Every taste, every touch of a creature, is a taste and 


224. CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


touch of Divine goodness. Divine goodness offers itself in one spark 
in this creature, in another spark in the other creature, and alto- 
gether make up a goodness inconceivable by any creature. The 
whole mass, and extracted spirit of it, is infinitely short of the good- 
ness of the Divine nature, imperfect shadows of that goodness which 
is in himself. Indeed, the more excellent anything is, the more 
nobly it acts; how remotely doth light, that excellent brightness of 
the creation, disperse itself! How doth that glorious creature, which 
God hath set in the heavens, spread its wings over heaven and earth, 
roll itself about the world, cast its beams upward and downward, 
insinuate into all corners, pierce the depths, and shoot up its rays 
into the heights, encircle the higher and lower creatures in its arms, 
reach out its communications to influence everything under the 
earth, as well as dart its beams of light and heat on things above, or 
upon the earth! ‘Nothing is hid from it” (Ps. xix. 6); not from 
its power, nor from its sweetness. How communicative also is 
water, a necessary and excellent creature! How active is it in a 
river, to nourish the living creatures engendered in its womb! re- 
fresheth every shore it runs by ; promotes the propagation of fruits 
for the nourishment, and bestows a verdure upon the ground, for the 
delight of man; and where it cannot reach the higher ground in its 
substance, it doth by its vapors, mounted up and concocted by the 
sun, and gently distilled upon the earth, for the opening its womb 
$o bring forth its fruits. God is more prone to communicate himself, 
than the sun to spread its wings, or the earth to mount up its fruits, 
or the water to multiply living creatures. Goodness is his nature. 
Hence were there internal communications of himself from eternity ; 
diffusions of himself, without himself, in time, in the creation of the 
world, like a full vessel running over. He created the world that 
he might impart his goodness to something without him, and diffuse 
larger measures of his goodness, after he had laid the first founda- 
tion of it in his being; and therefore he created several sorts of 
creatures, that they might be capable of various and distinct 
measures of his liberality, according to the distinct capacities of 
their nature, but imparted most to the rational creature, because that 
is only capable of an understanding to know him, and will to em- 
brace him. He is the highest goodness, and therefore a communica- 
tive goodness, and acts excellently according to his nature. 

4. God is necessarily good. None is necessarily good but God; he 
is as necessarily good, as he is necessarily God. His goodness is as 
inseparable from his nature as his holiness. He is good by nature, 
not only by will; as he is holy by nature, not only by will, he is 
good in his nature, and good in his actions; and as he cannot be bat! 
in his nature, so he cannot be bad in his communications; he can no 
more act contrary to this goodness in any of his actions, than he can 
un-God himself. It is not necessary that God should create a world; 
he was at his own choice whether he would create or no; but when 
he resolves to make a world, it is necessary that he should make it 
good, because he is goodness itself, and cannot act against his own 
nature. He could not create anything without goodness in the very 

b Tom. IL. p. 926. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 225 


act; the very act of creation, or communicating being to anything 
without himself, is in itself an act of goodness, as well as an act of 
power; had he not been good in himself, nothing could have been 
endued with any goodness by him. In the act of giving being, he 
is liberal; the being he bestows is a displaying his own liberality ; 
he could not confer what he needs not, and which could not be de- 
served, without being bountiful; since what was nothing, could not 
merit to be brought into being, the very act of giving to nothing a 
being, was an act of choice goodness. He could not create anything 
without goodness as the motive, and the necessary motive ; his good- 
ness could not necessitate him to make the world, but his goodness 
could only move him to resolve to make a world; he was not bound 
to erect and fashion it because of his goodness, but he could not frame 
it without his goodness as the moving cause. He could not create 
anything, but he must create it good. It had been inconsistent with 
the supreme goodness of his nature, to have created only murderous, 
ravenous, injurious creatures; to have created a bedlam rather than 
a world: a mere heap of confusion would have been as inconsistent 
with his Divine goodness, as with his Divine wisdom. Again, when 
his goodness had moved him to make a creature, his goodness would 
necessarily move him to be beneficial to his creature; not that this 
necessity results from any merit in the creature, which he had 
framed; but from the excellency and diffusiveness of his own nature, 
and his own glory; the end for which he formed it, which would 
have been obscure, yea, nothing, without some degrees of his bounty. 
What occasion of acknowledgments and praise could the creature 
have for its being, if God had given him only a miserable being, 
while it was innocent in action? The goodness of God would not 
suffer him to make a creature, without providing conveniences for 
it, so long as he thought good to maintain its being, and furnishing 
it with that which was necessary to answer that end for which he 
created it; and his own nature would not suffer him to be unkind 
to his rational creature, while it was innocent. It had been injustice 
to inflict evil upon the creature, that had not offended, and had no 
relation to an offending creature; the nature of God could not have 
brought forth such an act: and, therefore, some say, that God, after 
he had created man, could not presently annihilate him, and take 
away his life and being.t As a sovereign, he might do it; as Al- 
mighty, he was able to do it, as well as create him; but in regard of 
his goodness, he could not morally do it: for had he annihilated man 
as soon as ever he had made him, he had not made man for himself, 
and for his own glory; to be loved, worshipped, sought, and ac- 
knowledged by him. He would not then have been the end of 
man; he had created him in vain, and the world in vain, which he 
assures us he did not (Isa. xlv. 18, 19). And, certainly, if the gifts 
of God be without repentance, man could not have been annihilated 
after his creation, without repentance in God, without any cause, 
had not sin entered into the world. If God did not say to man, after 
sin had made its entrance into the world, “Seek ye me in vain,” he 
could not, because of his goodness, have said so to man in his inno- 
* Coeceii sum Theolog. p. 91. 
VOL. 1.—15 


226 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


cence. Ags God is necessarily mind, so he is necessarily will; as he 
is necessarily knowing, so he is necessarily loving. He could not 
be blessed, if he did not know himself, and his own perfection ; nor 
good, if he did not delight in himself, and his own perfections. 
And this goodness whereby he delights in himself, is the source of 
his delight in his creatures, wherein he sees the footsteps of himself. 
If he loves himself, he cannot but love the resemblance of himself, 
and the image of his own goodness. He loves himself, because he is 
the highest goodness and excellency; and loves everything as it re- 
sembles himself, because it is an efflux of his own goodness; and as 
he doth necessarily love himself, and his own excellency, so he doth 
necessarily love anything that resembles that excellency, which is 
the primary object of his esteem. But, 

5. Though he be necessarily good, yet he is also freely good. The 
necessity of the goodness of his nature hinders not the liberty of his 
actions; the matter of his acting is not at all necessary, but the man- 
ner of his acting in a good and bountiful way, is necessary, as well 
as free.« He created the world and man freely, because he might 
choose whether he would create it, but he created them good neces- 
sarily, because he was first necessarily good in his nature, before he 
was freely a Creator. When he created man, he freely gave him a 
positive law, but necessarily a wise and righteous law ; because he 
was necessarily wise, and righteous, before he was freely a Lawgiver. 
When he makes a promise, he freely lets the word go out of his lips, 
but when he hath made it, he is necessarily a faithful performer ; be- 
cause he was necessarily true and righteous in his nature, before he 
was freely a promiser. God is necessarily good im his nature, but free 
in his communications of it; to make him necessarily to communi- 
cate his goodness in the first creation of the creature, would render 
him but impotent, good without liberty and without will; if the 
communications of it be not free, the eternity of the world must 
necessarily be concluded, which some anciently asserted from the 
naturalness of God’s goodness, making the world flow from God as 
light from the sun. God, indeed, is necessarily good, affectvé in re- 
gard of his nature, but freely good, affectivé, in regard of the effluxes 
of it to this or that particular subject he pitcheth on. He is not so 
necessarily communicative of his goodness as the sun of his light, or 
a tree of its cooling shade, that chooseth not its objects, but enlight- 
ens all indifferently, without any variation or distinction; this were 
to make God of no more understanding than the sun, to shine not 
where it pleaseth, but where it must. He is an understanding agent, 
and hath a sovereign right to choose his own subjects; it would not 
be a supreme goodness, if it were not a voluntary goodness. It is 
agreeable to the nature of the highest good, to be absolutely free, to 
dispense his. goodness in what methods and measures he pleaseth, 
according to the free determinations of his own will, guided by the 
wisdom of his mind, and regulated by the holiness. of his nature. 
He is not to “ give an account of any of his matters” (Job xxxiil. 
18); “He will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and he 
will have compassion on whom he will have compassion” (Rom. ix. 

x Gilbert de Dei Dominio, p. 6. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 22% 


15); and he will be good, to whom he will be good; when he doth 
act, he cannot but act well, so it is necessary; yet he may act this 
good or that good, to this or that degree, so it is free. As it is the 
perfection of his nature, it is necessary; as it is the communication 
of his bounty, it is voluntary. The eye cannot but see if it be open, 
yet it may glance upon this or that color, fix upon this or that ob- 
ject, as it is conducted by the will. God necessarily loves himself, 
because he is good, yet not by constraint, but freedom; because his 
affection to himself is from a knowledge of himself. He necessarily 
loves his own image, because it is his image; yet freely, because not 
blindly, but from motions of understanding and will. What neces- 
sity could there be upon him, to resolve to communicate his good- 
ness? It could not be to make himself better by it, for he had a 
goodness incapable of any addition; he confers a goodness on his 
creatures, but reaps not a harvest of goodness to his own essence 
from his creatures. What obligation could there be from the crea- 
ture, to confer a goodness on him to this or that degree, for this or 
that duration? If he had not created a man, nor angel, he had done 
them no wrong; if he had given them only a simple being, he had 
manifested a part of his goodness, without giving them a right to 
challenge any more of him; if he had taken away their beings after 
a time when he had answered his end, he had done them no injury: 
for what law obliged him to enrich them, and leave them in that be- 
ing wherein he had invested them, but his sole goodness? What- 
ever sparks of goodness any creature hath, are the free effusions of 
God’s bounty, the offspring of his own inclination to do well, the 
simple favor of the donor; not purchased, not merited by the crea- 
ture. God is as unconstrained in his liberty, in all his communica- 
tions, as infinite in his goodness, the fountain of them. 

6. T'his goodness is communicative with the greatest pleasure. 
Moses desired to see his glory, God assures him he should see his 
goodness (Hxod. xxxiil. 18, 19); intimating that his goodness is his 
glory, and his glory his delight also. He sends not forth his bless 
ings with an ill will; he doth not stay till they are squeezed from 
him; he prevents men with his blessings of goodness (Ps. xxi. 3); 
he is most delighted when he is most diffusive; and his pleasure im 
bestowing, is larger than his creature’s in possessing. He 1s not cove- 
tous of his ewn treasures. He lays up his goodness in order to lay- 
ing it out with a complacency wholly divine. The jealousy princes 
have of their subjects makes them sparing of their gifts, for fear of 
giving them materials for rebellion: God’s foresight of the ill use 
men would make of his benefits damped him not in bestowing his 
largesses, He is incapable of envy; his own happiness can no more 
be diminished, than it can be increased. None can over-top him in 
goodness, because nothing hath any good but what is derived from 
him; his gifts are without repentance: sorrow hath no footing in 
him, who is infinitely happy, as well as infinitely good. Goodness 
and envy are inconsistent. How unjustly, then, did the devil accuse 
God! What God gives out of goodness, he gives with joy and 
gladness, He did not only will that we should be, but rejoice that 
he had brought us into being; he rejoiced in his works (Ps. civ. 31), 


228 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


and his wisdom stood by him, “ delighting in the habitable parts of 
the earth” (Proy. viii. 31). He beheld the world after its creation 
with a complacency, and still governs it with the same pleasure 
wherewith he reviewed it. Infinite cheerfulness attends infinite 
goodness. He would not give, if he had not a pleasure that others 
should enjoy his goodness; since he is better than anything, and 
more communicative than anything; he is more joyful in giving 
out, than the sun can be to run its race, in pouring forth light. He 
is said only to repent, and grieve, when men answer not the obliga- 
tions and ends of his goodness; which would be their own felicity, 
as well as his glory. Though he doth not force greater degrees of 
his goodness upon those that neglect it, yet he denies them not to 
those that solicit him for it: it is always greater pleasure to him to 
impart upon the importunities of the creatures, than it is to a mo- 
ther to reach out her breast to her crying and longing infant. Heis 
not wearied by the solicitations of men; he is pleased with their 
prayers, because he is pleased with the imparting of his own good- 
ness: he seems to be in travail with it, longing to be delivered of it 
into the lap of his creature. He is as much delighted with petitions 
for his liberality in bestowing his best goodness, as princes are weary 
of the craving of their subjects. None can be so desirous to squeeze 
those that are under them, as God is delighted to enlarge his hand 
towards them. It is the nature of his goodness to be glad of men’s 
solicitations for it, because they are significant valuations of it, and 
therefore fit occasions for him to bestow it. Since he doth not de- 
light in the unhappiness of any of his creatures, he certainly de- 
lights in what may conduce unto their felicity. He doth with the 
same delight multiply the effects of his goodness where his wisdom 
sees it convenient, as he beheld the first-fruits of his goodness with 
a complacency upon laying the top-stone of the creation. 

7. The displaying of this goodness was the motive and end of all 
his works of creation and providence.! God being infinitely wise, 
would not act without the highest reason, and for the highest end. 
The reason that induced him to create, must be of as great an emi- 
nency as himself: the motive could not be taken without him, be- 
cause there was nothing but himself in being; it must be taken, 
therefore, from within himself, and from some one of those most ex- 
cellent perfections whereby we conceive him. But, upon the exact 
consideration of all of them, none can seem to challenge that honor 
of being the motive of them, to resolve the setting forth any work, 
but his own goodness; this being the first thing manifest in his crea- 
tion, seems to be the first thing moving him to a resolution to create. 
Wisdom may be considered as directing, power considered as act- 
ing, but it is natural to reflect upon goodness as moving the one to 
direct, and the other to act. Power was the principle of his action, 
wisdom the rule of his action, goodness the motive of his action; 
principle and rule are awakened by the motive, and subservient to 
the end. That which is the most amiable perfection in the Divine 
nature, and that which he first took notice of, as the footsteps of 
them, in the distinct view of every day’s work, and the general view 

: 1 Amyr. Moral. Tom. I. p. 260. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 229 


of the whole frame, seems to claim the best right to be entitled the 
motive and end of his creation of things. God could have no end 
but himself, because there was nothing besides himself. Again, the 
end of every agent is that which he esteems good, and the best good 
for that kind of action: since nothing is to be esteemed good but 
God, nothing can be the ultimate end of God but himself, and his 
own goodness. What a man wills chiefly is his end; but God cannot 
will any other thing but himself as his end, because there is nothing 
superior to himself in goodness. He cannot will anything that su- 
premely serves himself and his own goodness as his end; for, if he 
did, that which he wills must be superior to himself in goodness, and 
then he is not God; or inferior to him in goodness, and then he 
would not be righteous, in willing that which is a lower good before 
a higher. God cannot will anything as his end of acting, but him: 
self, without undeifying himself. God’s will being infinitely good, 
cannot move for anything but what is infinitely good; and, there- 
fore, whatsoever God made, he made for himself (Prov. xvi. 4), that 
whatsoever he made might bear a badge of this perfection upon it, 
and be a discovery of his wonderful goodness: for the making 
things for himself doth not signify any indigence in God, that he 
made anything to increase his excellency (for that is capable of no 
addition), but to manifest his excellency. God possessing everything 
eminently in himself, did not create the world for any need he had 
of it; finite things were unable to make any accession to that which 
is infinite. Man, indeed, builds a house to be a shelter to him against 
wind and weather, and makes clothes to secure him from cold, 
and plants gardens for his recreation and health. God is above all 
those little helps; he did not make the world for himself in such a 
kind, but for himself, ¢. e. the manifestation of himself and the riches 
of his nature; not to make himself blessed, but to discover his own 
blessedness to his creatures, and to communicate something of it to 
them. He did not garnish the world with so much bounty, that he 
might live more happily than he did before, but that his rational 
creatures might have fit conveniences. As the end for which God 
demands the performance of our duty is not for his own advantage, 
but for our good (Deut. x. 13), so the end why he conferred upon us 
the excellency of such a being was for our good, and the discovery 
of his goodness to us; for had not God created the world, he had 
been wholly unknown to any but himself; he produced creatures, 
that he might be known: as the sun shines not only to dis- 
cover other things, but to be seen itself in its beauty and bright- 
ness. God would create things, because he would be known in his 
glory and liberality ; hence is it that he created intellectual crea- 
tures, because without them the rest of the creation could not be 
taken notice of: it had been in some sort in vain; for no nature 
lower than an understanding nature, was able to know the marks of 
God in the creation, and acknowledge him as God. In this regard, 
God is good above all creatures, because he intends only to commu- 
nicate his goodness in creation, not to acquire any goodness, or ex- 
cellency from them, as men do in their framing of things. God is 
all, and is destitute of nothing, and, therefore, nothing accrues to 


'230 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


him by the creation, but the acknowledgment of his goodness. 
This goodness, therefore, must be the motive and end of all his 
works, 

III. The third thing, that God is good. 

1. ‘The more excellent anything is in nature, the more of good- 
ness and kindness it hath. For we see more of love and kindness 
in creatures that are endued with sense, to their descendants, than in 
plants, that have only a principle of growth. Plants preserve their 
seeds whole that are enclosed in them ; animals look to their young 
only after they are dropped from them; yet, after some time, take 
no more notice of them than of a stranger that never had any birth 
from them. But man, that hath a higher principle of reason, 
cherisheth his offspring, and gives them marks of his goodness while 
he lives, and leaves not the world at the time of his death without 
some testimonies of it: much more must God, who is a higher prin- 
ciple than sense or reason, be ‘ good” and bountiful to all his off- 
spring. The more perfect anything is, the more it doth communi- 
cate itself, ‘The sun is more excellent than the stars, and, therefore, 
doth more sensibly, more extensively, disperse its liberal beams than 
the stars do. And the better any man is, the more charitable he is ; 
God being the most excellent nature, having nothing more excellent 
than himself, because nothing more ancient than himself, who is the 
Ancient of Days: there is nothing, therefore, better and more boun- 
tiful than himself. 

2. He is the cause of all created goodness; he must therefore him- 
self be the Supreme Good. What good is in the heavens, is the pro- 
duct of some Being above the earth; and those varieties of goodness 
in the earth, and several creatures, are somewhere in their fulness 
and union: that, therefore, which possesses all those scattered good- 
nesses in their fulness, must be all good, all that good which is dis- 
played in creatures; therefore sovereignly best. Whatsoever natural 
or moral goodness there is in the world, in angels, or men, or inferior 
creatures, is a line drawn from that centre, the bubblings of that 
fountain. God cannot but be better than all, since the goodness that 
is in creatures is the fruit of his own. If he were not good, he could 
produce no good: he could not bestow what he had not. If the 
creature be “‘ good,” as the apostle says “every creature is” (1 Tim. 
iv. 4), he must needs be better than all, because they have nothing 
but what is derived to them from him; and much more goodness 
than all, because finite beings are not capable of receiving into them, 
and containing in themselves, all that goodness which is in an Infi- 
nite Being; when we search for good in creatures, they come short 
of that satisfaction which is in God (Ps. iv. 6). As the certainty of a 
first principle of all things, is necessarily concluded from the being 
of creatures, and the upholding and sustaining power and virtue of 
God is concluded from the mutability of those things in the world; 
whence we infer, that there must be some stable foundation of those 
tottering things, some firm hinge upon which those changeable things 
do move, without which there would be no stability in the kinds of 
things, no order, no agreement, or union among them: so from the 
goodness of everything, and their usefulness to us, we must conclude 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 9381 


him good, who made all those things. And since we find distinct 
goodnesses in the creature, we must conclude that one principle 
whence they did flow, excels in the glory of goodness: all those lit- 
tle glimmerings of goodness which are scattered in the creatures, as 
the image in the glass, represent the face, posture, motion of him 
whose image it is, but not in the fulness of life and spirit, as in the 
original; it is but a shadow at the best, and speaks something more 
excellent in the copy. As God hath an infiniteness of being above 
them, so he hath a supremacy of goodness beyond them: what they 
have, is but a participation from him; what he hath, must be infi- 
nitely supereminent above them. If anything be good by itself, it 
must be infinitely good, it would set itself no bounds; we must make 
as many gods, as particulars of goodness in the world: but bemg 
good by the bounty of another, that from whence they flow must be 
the chief goodness. It is God’s excellency and goodness, which, like 
a beam, pierceth all things: he decks spirits with reason, endues 
matter with form, furnisheth everything with useful qualities. As 
one beam of the sun illustrates fire, water, earth; so one beam of 
God enlightens and endows minds, souls, and universal nature: 
nothing in the world had its goodness from itself, any more than 
it had its being from itself. The cause must be richer than the 
effect. 

But that which I intend is the defence of this goodness. 

First, The goodness of God is not impaired by suffering sin to 
enter into the world, and man to fall thereby. It is rather a testi- 
mony of God’s goodness, that he gave man an ability to be happy, 
than any charge against his goodness, that he settled man in a capa- 
city to be evil. God was first a benefactor to man, before man could 
be a rebel against God. May it not be inquired, whether it had not 
been against the wisdom of God, to have made a rational creature 
with liberty, and not suffer him to act according to the nature he 
was endowed with, and to follow his own choice for some time? 
Had it been wisdom to frame a free creature, and totally to restrain 
that creature from following its liberty? Had it been goodness, as 
it were, to force the creature to be happy against its will? God’s 
goodness furnished Adam with a power to stand; was it contrary to 
his goodness, to leave Adam to a free use of that power? ‘To make 
a creature, and not let that creature act according to the freedom of 
his nature, might have been thought to have been a blot upon his 
wisdom, and a constraint upon the creature, not to make use of that 
freedom of his nature, which the Divine goodness had bestowed 
upon him. To what purpose did God make a law, to govern his 
rational creature, and yet resolve that creature should not have his 
choice, whether he would obey it or no? Had he been really con- 
strained to observe it, his observation of it could no more have been 
called obedience, than the acts of brutes that have a kind of natural 
constraint upon them by the instinct of their nature, can be called 
obedience: in vain had God endowed a creature with so great and 
noble a principle as liberty. Had it been goodness in God, after he had 


 Ficinus in Con. Amor. Orat. 2. cap. p. 1326. 


232 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


made a reasonable creature, to govern him in the same manner as le 
does brutes by a necessary instinct? It was the goodness of God to 
the nature of men and angels, to leave them in such a condition, to 
be able to give him a voluntary obedience, a nobler offering than 
the whole creation could present him with; and shall this goodness 
be undervalued, and accounted mean, because man made an ill use 
of it, and turned it into wantonness? As the unbelief of man doth 
not diminish the redeeming grace of God (Rom. 11. 8), so neither 
doth the fall of man lessen the creating goodness of God. Besides, 
why should the permission of sin be thought more a blemish to his 
goodness, than the providing a way of redemption for the destroying 
the works of sin and the devil, be judged the glory of it, whereby 
he discovered a goodness of grace that surpassed the bounds of na- 
ture? If this were a thing that might seem to obscure or deface 
the goodness of God, in the permission of the fall of angels and 
Adam, it was in order to bring forth a greater goodness in a more 
illustrious pomp, to the view of the world (Rom. xi. 82): “God hath 
concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all.” 
But if nothing could be alleged for the defence of his goodness in 
this, it were most comely for an ignorant creature not to impeach 
his goodness, but adore him in his proceedings, in the same language 
the apostle doth (ver. 83): ‘‘O the depth of the riches both of the 
wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judg- 
ments, and his ways past finding out!” | 

Secondly, Nor is his goodness prejudiced, by not making all things 
the equal subjects of it. 

1. It is true all things are not subjects of an equal goodness. ‘The 
goodness of God is not so illustriously manifested in one thing as an- 
other. In the creation he hath dropped goodness upon some, in giv- 
ing them beings and sense, and poured it upon others in endowing 
them with understanding and reason. The sun is full of light, but 
it hath a want of sense; brutes excel in the vigor of sense, but they 
are destitute of the light of reason; man hath a mind and reason 
conferred on him, but he hath neither the acuteness of mind, nor the 
quickness of motion equal with an angel. In providence also he doth 
give abundance, and opens his hand to some; to others he is more spar- 
ing: he gives greater gifts of knowledge to some, while he lets oth- 
ers remain in ignorance; he strikes down some, and raiseth others; 
he afflicts some with a continual pain, while he blesseth others with 
an uninterrupted health; he hath chosen one nation wherein to set 
up his gospel sun, and leaves another benighted in their own igno- 
rance. ‘Known was God in Judea; they were a peculiar people 
alone of all the nations of the earth” (Deut. xiv. 2). He was not 
equally good to the angels: he held forth his hand to support some 
in their happy habitation, while he suffered others to sink in irrep- 
arable ruin; and he is not so diffusive here of his goodness to his 
own as he will be in heaven. Here their sun is sometimes clouded, 
but there all clouds and shades will be blown away, and melted into 
nothing: instead of drops here, there will be above rivers of life. Is 
any creature destitute of the open marks of his goodness, though all 
are not enriched with those signal characters which he vouchsafes to 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 238 


others? He that is unerring, pronounced everything good distinctly 
in its production, and the whole good in its universal perfection 
(Gen. i. 4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 81). Though he made not all things 
equally good, yet he made nothing evil; and though one creature in 
regard of its nature may be better than another, yet an inferior crea- 
ture, in regard of its usefulness in the order of the creation, may be 
better than a superior. ‘The earth hath a goodness in bringing forth 
fruits, and the waters in the sea a goodness in multiplying food. That 
any of us have a being is goodness; that we have not so healthful a 
being as others is unequal, but not unjust goodness. He is good to 
all, though not in the same degree: “The whole earth is full of his 
mercy” (Ps. cxix. 64). A good man is good to his cattle, to his ser- 
vants; he makes a provision for all, but he bestows not those floods 
of bounty upon them that he doth upon his children. As there are 
various gifts, but one Spirit (1 Cor. xu. 4), so there are various distri- 
butions, but from one goodness; the drops, as well as the fuller 
streams, are of the same fountain, and relish of the nature of it; and 
though he do not make all men partake of the riches of his grace 
after the corruption of their nature, is his goodness disgraced hereby ? 
or doth he merit the title of cruelty? Will any diminish the good- 
ness of a father for his not setting up his son after he hath foolishly 
and wilfully proved bankrupt; or not rather admire his liberality in 
giving him so large a stock to trade with when he first set him up 
in the world? 

2. ‘The goodness of God to creatures, is to be measured by their 
distinct usefulness to the common end. It were better for a toad or 
serpent to be a man, 2. e. better for the creature itself, as it were ad- 
vanced to a higher degree of being, but not better for the universe: 
he could have made every pebble a living creature, and every liv- 
ing creature a rational one; but that he made everything as we 
see, it was a goodness to the creature itself; but that he did not 
make it of a higher elevation in nature, was a part of his goodness 
to the rational creature. If all were rational creatures, there would 
have been wanting creatures of an inferior nature for their con- 
veniency ; there would have wanted the manifestation of the variety 
and “fulness of his goodness.” Had all things in the world been 
rational creatures, much of that goodness which he hath communi- 
cated to rational creatures would not have appeared: how could 
man have showed his skill in taming and managing creatures more 
mighty than himself? What materials would there have been to 
manifest the goodness of God, bestowed upon the reasonable crea- 
tures for framing excellent works and inventions? Much of the 
goodness of God had lain wrapt up from sense and understanding. 
All other things partake not of so great a goodness as man; yet 
they are so subservient to that goodness poured forth on man, that 
little of it could have been seen without them. Consider man, 
every member in his body hath a goodness in itself; but a greater 
goodness as referred to the whole, without which the goodness of 
the more noble part would not be manifested. The head is the 
most excellent member, and hath greater impressions of Divine 
goodness upon it, in regard that it is the organ of understanding : 


234 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


were every member of the body a head, what a deformed monster 
would man be! If he were all head, where would be feet for 
motion, and arms for action? Man would be fit only for thought, 
and not for exercise. The goodness of God in giving man so noble 
a part as the head, could not be known without a tongue, whereby 
to express the conception of his mind; and without feet and hands 
whereby to act much of what he conceives, and determines, and 
execute the resolves of his will; all those have a goodness in them- 
selves, an honor, a comeliness from the goodness of God (1 Cor. 
xii. 22, 23), but not so great a goodness as the nobler part: yet, if 
you consider them in their functions, and refer them to that excel- 
lent member which they serve, their inferior goodness is absolutely 
necessary to the goodness of the other; without which, the good- 
ness of the head and understanding would le im obscurity, be in- 
significant to the whole world, and, in a great measure, to the per- 
son himself that wants such members. 

3. “The goodness of God is more seen in this inequality.” If 
God were equally good to all, 1t would destroy commerce, unity, the 
links of human society, damp charity, and render that useless which 
is one of the noblest and delightfulest duties to be exercised here ; 
it would cool prayer, which is excited by wants, and is a necessary 
demonstration of the creature’s dependence on God. But in this 
inequality every man hath enough in his enjoyments for praise, 
and in his wants, matter for his prayer. Besides the inequality of 
the creature isthe ornament of the world; what pleasure could a 
garden afford if there were but one sort of flowers, or one sort of 
plants? far less than when there is variety to please the sight, and 
every other sense. Again, the freedom of Divine goodness, which 
is the glory of it, is evident hereby; had he been alike good to 
all, it would have looked like a necessary, not a free act; but by 
the inequality, itis manifest that he doth not do it by a natural ne- 
cessity as the sun shines, but by a voluntary liberty, as being the 
entire Lord, and free disposer of his own goods; and that is the 
gift of the pleasure of his will, as well as the efflux of his nature, 
that he hath not a goodness without wisdom, but a wisdom as rich 
as his bounty. 

4. The goodness of God could not be equally communicated to 
all, after their settlement in their several beings,—because they have 
not a capacity in their natures for it: he doth bestow the marks of 
his goodness according to that natural capacity of fitness he per- 
ceives in his creatures; as the water of the sea fills every creek and 
gulf with different measures, according to the compass each have to 
contain it; and as the sun doth disperse light to the stars above, 
and the places below, to some more, to some less, according to the 
measures of their reception. God doth not do good to all creatures 
according to the greatness of his own power, and the extent of his 
own wealth, but according to the capacity of the subject; not so 
much good as he can do, but so much good as the creature can re- 
ceive. The creature would sink, if God would pour out all his 
goodness upon it; as Moses would have perished, if God should 
bave shown him all his glory (Exod. xxxii. 18, 20). He doth 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 235 


manifest more good to his reasonable creatures, because they are 
more capable of acknowledging, and setting forth his goodness, 

5. God ought to be allowed the free disposal of his own good- 
ness. Is not God the Lord of his own gifts; and will you not allow 
him the privilege of having some more peculiar objects of his love 
and pleasure, which you allow without blame to man, and use your- 
self without any sense of a crime? Is a prince esteemed good, 
though he be not equally bountiful to all his servants, nor equally 
gracious in pardoning all his rebels; and shall the goodness of the 
great Sovereign of the world be impeached, notwithstanding those 
mighty distributions of it, because he will act according to his own 
wisdom and pleasure, and not according to men’s fancies and hu- 
mors? Must purblind reason be the judge and director how God 
shall dispose of his own, rather than his own infinite wisdom and 
sovereign will? Is Godless good, because there are numberless no- 
things, which he is able to bring into being? He could create a 
world of more creatures than he hath done: doth he, therefore, 
wish evil to them, by letting them remain in that nothing from 
whence he could draw them? No; but he denies that good to 
them, which he is able, if he pleased, to confer upon them. If God 
doth not give that good to a creature which it wants by its own 
demerit, can he be said to wish evil to it; or, only to deny that 
goodness which the creature hath forfeited, and which is at God’s 
liberty to retain or disperse?" Though God cannot but love his 
own image where he finds it, yet when this image is lost, and the 
devil’s image voluntary received, he may choose whether he will 
manifest his goodness to such a one orno. Will you not account 
that man liberal, that distributes his alms to a great company, 
though he rejects some? Much more will you account him good, 
if he rejects none that implore him, but dispenseth his doles to 
every one upon their petition: and is he not good, because he 
will not bestow a farthing upon those that address not themselves 
to him? God is so good, that he denies not the best good to 
those that seek him: he hath promised life and happiness to them 
that do so. Is he less good, because he will not distribute his 
goodness to those that despise him ? Though he be good, yet his 
wisdom is the rule of dispensing his goodness. 

6. The severe punishment of offenders, and the afflictions he in- 
flicts upon his servants, are no violations of his goodness. The 
notion of God’s vindictive justice is as naturally inbred, and im- 
planted in the mind of man, as that of his goodness, and those two 
Sentiments never shocked one another. The heathen never thought 
him bad, because he was just; nor unrighteous, because he was 
good. God being infinitely good, cannot possibly intend or act 
anything but what is good: “Thou art good, and thou doest 
good ;” «. e. whatsoever thou dost is good, whatsoever it be, pleasant 
or painful to the creature (Ps. cxix. 68): punishments themselves 
are not a moral evil in the person that inflicts, though they are a 
natural evil in the person that suffers them.c In ordering pun- 
ishment to the wicked, good is added to evil; in ordering im- 

2 Camero, p. 30. ° Boetius. 


236 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


punity to the wicked, evil is added to evil. To punish wicked- 
ness 1s right, therefore good: to leave men uncontrolled in their 
wickedness, is unrighteous, and therefore bad. But, again, shall 
his justice in some few judgments in the world, impeach his good- 
ness, more than his wonderful patience to sinners is able to silence 
the calumnies against him? Is not his hand fuller of gracious 
doles, than of dreadful thunderbolts? Doth he not oftener seem 
forgetful of his justice, when he pours out upon the guilty the 
streams of his mercy, than to be forgetful of his goodness, when he 
sprinkles in the world some drops of his wrath ? 

; First, God’s judgments in the world, do not infringe his goodness; 
or, 

1. The justice of God is a part of the goodness of his nature. 
God himself thought so, when he told Moses he would make all his 
goodness pass before him (Exod. xxxiii. 19): he leaves not out in 
that enumeration of the parts of it, his resolution, by no means to 
clear the guilty, but to visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
children (Exod. xxxiv. 7). It is a property of goodness to hate evil, 
and, therefore, a property of goodness to punish it: it is no less 
righteousness to give according to the deserts of a person in a way 
of punishment, than to reward a person that obeys his precepts in a 
way of recompense. Whatsoever is righteous is good; sin is evil; 
and, therefore, whatsoever doth witness against it, is good; his good- 
ness, therefore, shines in his justice, for without being just he could 
not be good. Sin is a moral disorder in the world: every sin is in- 
justice : injustice breaks God’s order in the world; there is a neces- 
sity therefore of justice to put the world in order. Punishment 
orders the person committing the injury, who, when he will not be 
in the order of obedience, must be in the order of suffering for God’s 
honor. The goodness of all things which God pronounced so, con- 
sisted in their order and beneficial helpfulness to one another: when 
this order is inverted, the goodness of the creature ceaseth: if it be 
a bad thing to spoil this order, is it not a part of Divine goodness to 
reduce them into order, that they may be reduced in some measure 
to their goodness? Do we ever account a governor less in goodness, 
because he is exact in justice, and punisheth that which makes a 
disorder in his government? and is it a diminution of the Divine 
goodness, to punish that which makes a disorder in the world? As 
wisdom without goodness would be a serpentine craft, and issue in 
destruction ; so goodness without justice would be impotent indul- 
gence, and cast things into confusion. When Abel’s blood cried 
out for engeance against Cain, it spake a good thing; Christ’s 
blood speaking better things than the blood of Abel, implies that 
Abel’s blood spake a good thing; the comparative implies a positive 
(Heb. xu. 24). Ifit were the goodness of that innocent blood to de- 
mand justice, it could not be a badnessin the Sovereign of the world 
to execute it. How can God sustain the part of a good and right- 
eous judge, if he did not preserve human society? and how would 
it be preserved, without manifesting himself by public judgments 
against public wrongs? Is there not as great a necessity that good- 
ness should have instruments of judgment, as that there should be 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GoD. 287. 


prisons, bridewells, and gibbets, in a good commonwealth? Did not 
the thunderbolts of God sometimes roar in the ears of men, they 
would sin with a higher hand than they do, fly more in the face of 
God, make the world as much a moral, as it was at first a natural 
chaos: the ingenuity of men would be damped, if there were not 
something to work upon their fears, to keep them in their due order. 
Impunity of the mnocent person is worse than any punishment. It 
is a misery to want medicines for the cure of a sharp disease; and a 
mark of goodness in a prince to consult for the security of the politi- 
cal body, by cutting off a gangrened and corrupting member: and 
what prince would deserve the noble title of good, if he did not re- 
strain, by punishment, those evils which impair the public welfare? 
Is it not necessary that the examples of sin, whereby others have 
been encouraged to wickedness, should be made examples of justice, 
whereby the same persons and others may be discouraged from what 
before they were greedily inclined unto? Is nota hatred of what 
is bad and unworthy, as much a part of Divine goodness, as a love 
to what is excellent, and bears a resemblance to himself? Could he 
possibly be accounted good, that should bear the same degree of 
affection to a prodigious vice, as to a sublime virtue? and should 
behave himself in the same manner of carriage to the innocent and 
culpable? could you account him good, if he did always with plea- 
sure behold evil, and perpetually suffer the oppressions of the inno- 
cent under unpunished wickedness? How should we know the 
goodness of the Divine nature, and his affection to the goodness of 
his creature, if he did not by some acts of severity witness his impla- 
cable aversion against sin, and his care to preserve the good govern- 
ment of the world? If corrupted creatures should always be ex- 
empt from the effects of his indignation, he would declare himself 
not to be infinitely good, because he would not be really righteous. 
No man thinks it a natural vice in the sun, by the power of its 
scorching heat, to dry up and consume the unwholesome vapors of 
the air; nor are the demonstrations of Divine justice any blots upon 
his goodness, since they are both for the defence and ‘glory of his 
holiness, and for the preservation of the beauty and order of the 
world. 

2. Is it not part of the goodness of God to make laws, and annex 
threatenings; and shall it be an impeachment of his goodness to 
support them? The more severe laws are made for deterring evil, 
the better is that prince accounted in making such provision for the 
welfare of the community. The design of laws, and the design of 
upholding the honor of those laws by the punishment of offenders, 
is to promote goodness and restrain evil; the execution of those 
laws must be therefore pursuant to the same design of goodness 
which first settled them. Would it not be contrary to goodness, to 
suffer that which was designed for the support of goodness, to be 
scorned and slighted? It would neither be prudence nor goodness, 
but folly and vice, to let laws, which were made to promote virtue, 
be broken with impunity. Would not this be to weaken virtue, 
and give a new life and vigor to vice? Not only the rightcousness 
of the law itself, but the wisdom of the Lawgiver would be exposed 


238 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


to contempt, if the violations of it remained uncontrolled, and the 
violence offered by men passed unpunished. None but will ac- 
knowledge the Divine precepts to be the image of the righteousness 
of God, and beneficial for the common good of the world (Rom. vii. 
12): “The law is holy, just, and good,” and so is every precept of 
it; the law is for no other end, but to keep the creature in subjection 
to, and dependence on God; this dependence could not be preserved 
without a law, nor that law be kept in reputation, without a penalty ; 
nor would that penalty be significant without an execution. Every 
law loseth the nature of a law, without a penalty; and the penalty 
loseth its vigor, without the infliction of it: how can those laws at- 
tain their end, if the transgressions of them be not punished? Would 
not the wickedness of the men’s hearts be encouraged by such a kind 
of uncomely goodness? and all the threatenings be to no other end, 
than to engender vain and fruitless fears in the minds of men? Is 
it good for the majesty of God to suffer itself to be trampled on by 
his vassals? to suffer men, by their rebellion, to level his law with 
the wickedness of their own hearts; and by impunity slight his own 
glory, and encourage their disobedience? Who would give any 
man, any prince, any father, that should do so, the name of a good 
governor? Ifit were a fruit of Divine goodness to make laws, is it 
contrary to goodness to support the honor of them? It is every 
whit as rational and as good to vindicate the honor of his laws by 
justice, as at first to settle them by authority ; as much goodness to 
vindicate it from contempt, as at first to enact it; as it is as much 
wisdom to preserve a law, as at first to frame it: shall his precepts 
be thought by him unworthy of a support, that were not thought by 
him unworthy to be made? The same reason of goodness that led 
him to enjoin them, will lead him to revenge them. Did evil appear 
odious to him, while he enacted this law; and would not his good- 
ness, as well as his wisdom, appear odious to him, if he did never 
execute it? Would it.not be a denial of his' own goodness, to be 
led by the foolish and corrupt judgment of his creatures, and slight 
his own law, because his rebels spurn at it? Since he valued it be- 
fore they could actually contemn it, would he not misjudge his own 
law and his own wisdom, discount from the true value of them, con- 
demn his own acts, censure his precepts as unrighteous, and there- 
fore evil and injurious? remove the differences. between good and 
evil, look upon vice as virtue, and wickedness as righteousness, if 
he thought his commands unworthy a vindication? How can there 
be any support to the honor of his precepts, without sometimes exe- 
cuting the severity of his threatenings? And as to his threatenings 
of punishment for the breach of his laws, are they not designed to 
discourage wickedness, as the promises of reward were designed to 
encourage goodness? Hath he not multiplied the one, to scare men 
from sin, as well as the other, to allure men to obedience? Is not 
the same truth engaged to support the one, as well as the other; and 
how could he be abundant in goodness, if he were not abundant in 
truth (Exod. xxxiv. 6)? both are linked together; if he neglected 
his truth, he would be out of love with his own goodness; since it 
cannot be manifested in performing the promises to the obedicnt, if 


& 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 939 


it be not also manifested in executing his threatenings upon the re- 
bellious. Had not God annexed threatenings to his laws, he would 
have had no care of hisown goodness. The order between God and 
the creature, wherein the declaration of his goodness consisted, might 
have been easily broken by his creature; man would have freed 
himself from subjection to God; been unaccountable to him, had 
this consisted with that infinite goodness whereby he loves himself, 
and loves his creatures. As therefore the annexing threatenings to 
his law, was a part of his goodness; the execution of them is so far 
from being a blemish, that it is the honor of his goodness. ‘The re- 
wards of obedience, and the punishment of disobedience, refer to the 
same end, viz. the due manifestation of the valuation of his own law, 
the glorifying his own goodness, which enjoined so beneficial a law 
for man, and the support of that goodness in the creatures, which by 
that law he demands righteously and kindly of them. 

8. Hence it follows, That not to punish evil, would be a want of 
goodness to himself. The goodness of God is an indulgent good- 
ness, in a way of wisdom and reason; not a fond goodness, in a 
way of weakness and folly: would it not be a weakness, always to 
bear with the impenitent? a want of expressing a goodness to good- 
ness itself? Would not goodness have more reason to complain, for 
a want of justice to rescue it, than men have reason to complain, for 
the exercise of justice in the vindication of it? If God established 
all things in order, with infinite wisdom and goodness, and God 
silently beheld, forever, this order broken, would he not either 
charge himself with a want of power, or a want of will, to preserve 
the marks of his own goodness? Would it be a kindness to himself 
to be careless of the breaches of his own orders? His throne would 
shake, yea, sink from under him, if justice, whereby he sentenceth, 
and judgment, whereby he executes his sentence, were not the sup- 
ports of it (Ps. Ixxxix. 14). “Justice and judgment are the habita- 
tion of thy throne, pizn, the stability or foundation of thy throne. 
So, Ps. xcii. 2. Man would forget his relation to God; God would 
be unknown to be sovereign of the world, were he careless of the 
breaches of his own order (Ps. ix. 16). ‘The Lord is known by the 
judgments which he executes;” is it not a part of his goodness, to 
preserve the indispensable order between himself and his creatures ? 
His own sovereignty, which is good, and the subjection of the crea- 
ture to him as sovereign, which is also good; the one would not be 
maintained in its due place, nor the other restrained in due limits, 
without punishment. Would it be a goodness in him to see good- 
ness itself trampled upon constantly, without some time or other 
appearing for the relief of it? Is it not a goodness to secure his own 
honor, to prevent further evil? Is it not a goodness to discourage 
men by judgments, sometimes, from a contempt and. ill use of his 
bounty; as well as sometimes patiently to bear with them, and wait 
upon them for a reformation? Must God be bad to himself, to be 
kind to his enemies? And shall it be acounted an unkindness, and 
a mark of evil in him, not to suffer himself to be always outraged 
and defied? The world is wronged by sin, as well as God is injured 
by it. How could God be good to himself, if he righted not his 


240 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 
own honor? or be a good governor of the world, if he did not some- 
times witness against the injuries it receives sometimes from the 
works of his hands? Would he be good to himself, as a God, to be 
careless of his own honor? or good, as the Rector of the world, and 
be regardless of the world’s confusion? That God should give an 
eternal good to that creature that declines its duty, and despiseth 
his sovereignty, is not agreeable to the goodness of his wisdom, or 
that of his righteousness. It is a part of God’s goodness to love him- 
self. Would he love his sovereignty, if he saw it daily slighted, 
without sometimes discovering how much he values the honor of it? 
Would he have any esteem for his own goodness, if he beheld it 
trampled upon, without any will to vindicate it? Doth mercy de- 
serve the name of cruelty, because it pleads against a creature that 
hath so often abused it, and hath refused to have any pity exercised 
towards it in arighteous and regular way? Is sovereignty destitute 
of goodness, because it preserves its honor against one that would 
not have it reign over him? Would he not seem, by such a regard- 
lessness, to renounce his own essence, undervalue and undermine 
his own goodness, if he had not an implacable aversion to whatso- 
ever is contrary to it? If men turn grace into wantonness, is it not 
more reasonable he should turn his grace into justice? All his attri- 
butes, which are parts of his goodness, engage him to punish sin; 
without it, his authority would be vilified, his purity stained, his 
power derided, his truth disgraced, his justice scorned, his wisdom 
slighted ; he would be thought to have dissembled in his laws; and be 
judged, according to the rules of reason, to be void of true goodness. 
4. Punishment is not the primary intention of God. It is his 
goodness that he hath no mind to punish; and therefore he hath put 
a bar to evil, by his prohibitions and threatenings, that he might 
prevent sin, and, consequently, any occasions of severity against 
his creature.e The principal intention of God, in his law, was 
to encourage goodness, that he might reward it; and when, by 
the commission of evil, God is provoked to punish, and takes the 
sword into his hand, he doth not act against the nature of his 
goodness, but against the first intention of his goodness in his pre- 
cepts, which was to reward; as a good judge principally intends, 
in the exercise of his office, to protect good men from violence, and 
maintain the honor of the laws, yet, consequently, to punish bad 
men, without which the protection of the good would not be secured, 
nor the honor of the law be supported; and a good judge, in the ex- 
ercise of his office, doth principally intend the encouragement of the 
good, and wisheth there were no wickedness that might occasion 
punishment; and, when he doth sentence a malefactor, in order to 
the execution of him, he doth not act against the goodness of his 
nature, but pursuant to the duty of his place, but wisheth he-had no 
occasion for such severity. ‘T'hus God seems to speak of himself 
(Isa, xxviii. 21); he calls the act of his wrath his “ strange work, his 
strange act;” a work, not against his nature, as the Governor of the 
world, but against his first intention, as Creator, which was to mani- 
fest his goodness; therefore he moves with a slow pace in those acts, 
P Zarnovecius, de Satisfact. Part I. cap. i. pp. 8, 4. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 241 


brings out his judgments with relentings of heart, and seems to cast 
out his thunderbolts with a trembling hand: “ He doth not afflict 
willingly, nor grieve the children of men” (Lam. ii. 83); and_there- 
fore he “delights not in the death of a sinner” (Kzek. xxxin. 11); 
not in death, as death; in punishment, as punishment; but as it re- 
duceth the suffering creature to the order of his precept, or reduceth 
him into order under his power, or reforms others who are specta- 
tors of the punishment upon a criminal of their own nature; God 
only hates the sin, not the sinner; he desires only the destruction 
of the one, not the misery of the other; the nature of a man doth not 
displease him, because it is a work of his own goodness, but the na- 
ture of the sinner displeaseth him, because it is a work of the sinner’s 
own extravagance.1 Divine goodness pitcheth not its hatred prima- 
rily upon the sinner, but upon the sin: but since he cannot punish 
the sin without punishing the subject to which it cleaves, the sinner 
falls under his lash. Whoever regards a good judge as an enemy to 
the malefactor, but as an enemy to his crime, when he doth sentence 
and execute him? 

5. Judgments in the world have a goodness in them, therefore 
they are no impeachments of the goodness of God. 

(1.) A goodness in their preparations. He sends not judgments 
without giving warnings; his justice is so far from extinguishing his 
goodness, that his goodness rather shines out in the preparations of 
his justice; he gives men time, and sends them messengers, to per- 
suade them to another temper of mind, that he may change his hand, 
and exercise his liberality where he threatened his severity. When 
the heathen had presages of some evil upon their persons or countries, 
they took them for invitations to repentance, excited themselves to 
many acts of devotion, implored his favor, and often experimented it. 
The Ninevites, upon the proclamation of the destruction of their city 
by Jonah, fell to petitioning him, whereby they signified, that they 
thought him good, though he were just, and more prone to pity than 
severity; and their humble carriage caused the arrows he had ready 
against them to drop out of his hands (Jonah i. 9, 10). When he 
brandisheth his sword, he wishes for some to stand in that gap, to mol- 
lify his anger, that he might not strike the fatal blow (Ezek. xxxn. 30); 
“T sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge, and 
stand in the gap before me in the land, that I should not destroy it.” 
He was desirous that his creatures might be in a capacity to receive 
the marks of his bounty. This he signified, not obscurely, to Moses 
(Exod. xxxii. 10), when he spoke to him to let him alone, that his 
anger might wax hot against the people, after they had made a 
golden calf and worshipped it. “ Let me alone,” said God: not that 
Moses restrained him, saith Chrysostom, who spake nothing to him, 
but stood silent before him, and knew nothing of the people’s idola- 
try; but God would give him an occasion of praying for them, that 
he might exercise his mercy towards them; yet in such a manner, 
that the people, being struck with a sense of their crime, and the 
horror of Divine justice, they might be amended for the future, when 
they should understand that their death was not averted by their 


4 Suarez, Vol. I. de Deo, lib, iii. cap. 7. p. 146. r Cressel, Anthol. Decad. IJ. p. 162. 
VOL. I1.—16 


942, CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


own merit or intercession, but by Moses, his patronage of them, and 
pleading for them; as we see sometimes masters and fathers angry 
with their servants and children, and preparing themselves to punish 
them, but secretly wish some friend to intercede for them, and take 
them out of their hands: there is a goodness shining in the prepara- 
tions of his judgments. 

2. A goodness in the execution of them. They are good, as they 
shew God disaffected to evil, and conduce to the glory of his holi- 
ness, and deter others from presumptuous sins (Deut. x. 3): “I will 
be glorified in all that draw near unto me ;—in his judgment upon 
Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, for offering strange fire. By 
them God preserves the excellent footsteps of his own goodness in 
his creation and his law, and curbs the licentiousness of men, and 
contains them within the bounds of their duty. “Thy judgments are 
good,” saith the Psalmist (Ps. cxix; xxxix); «¢. thy judicial pro- 
ceedings upon the wicked; for he desires God there to turn away, 
by some signal act, the reproach the wicked cast upon him. Can 
there be any thing more miserable than to live in a world full of 
wickedness, and void of the marks of Divine goodness and justice to 
repress it? Were there not judgments in the world, men would for- 
get God, be insensible of his government of the world, neglect the 
exercises of natural and christian duties; religion would be at its 
last gasp, and expire among them, and men would pretend to break 
God’s precepts by God’s authority. Are they not good, then, as 
they restrain the creature from further evils; affight others from 
the same crimes which they were inclinable to commit? He strikes 
some, to reform others that are spectators; as Apollonius tamed. 
pigeons by beating dogs before them. Punishments are God's 
gracious warnings to others, not to venture upon the crimes which 
they see attended with such judgments. ‘T'he censers of Corah, 
Dathan, and Abiram, were to be wrought into plates for a covering 
of the altar, to abide there as a memento to others, not to approach 
to the exercise of the priestly office without an authoritative call 
from God (Numb. xvi. 88, 40); and those judgments exercised in 
the former ages of the world, were intended by Divine goodness for 
warnings, even in evangelical times. Lot’s wife was turned into a 
pillar of salt, to prevent men from apostasy ; that use Christ himself 
makes of it, in the exhortation against “turning back” (Luke xvi. 
82, 83). And (Ps. lviii. 10): “The righteous shall wash his feet in 
the blood of the wicked.” When God shall drench his sword in the 
blood of the wicked, the righteous shall take occasion from thence, 
to purify themselves, and reform their ways, and look to the paths 
of their feet. Would not impunity be hurtful to the world, and 
men receive encouragement to sin, if severities sometimes did not 
bridle them from the practice of their inclinations? Sometimes the 
sinner himself is reformed, and sometimes removed from being an 
example to others. Though thunder be an affrightening noise, and 
lightning a scaring flash, yet they have a liberal goodness in them, 
in shattering and consuming those contagious vapors which burden 
and infect the air, and thereby render it more clear and healthful. 
Again, there are few acts of Divine justice upon a people, but are in 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 943 


the very execution of them attended with demonstrations of his 
goodness to others; he is a protector of his own, while he is a re- 
venger on his enemies; when he rides upon his horses in anger 
against some, his chariots are “chariots of salvation” to others (Hab. 
iii. 8). Terror makes way for salvation; the overthrow of Pharaoh 
and the strength of his nation, completed the deliverance of the Is- 
raelites. Had not the Egyptians met with their destruction, the Is- 
raelites had unavoidably met with their ruin, against all the promises 
God had made to them, and to the defamation of his former justice, 
in the former plagues upon their oppressors. The death of Herod 
was the security of Peter, and the rest of the maliced christians. 
The gracious deliverance of good men is often occasioned by some 
severe stroke upon some eminent persecutor ; the destruction of the 
oppressor is the rescue of the innocent. Again, where is there a 
judgment but leaves more criminals behind than it sweeps away, 
that deserved to be involved in the same fate with the rest? More 
Egyptians were left behind to possess and enjoy the goodness of 
their fruitful land, than they were that were hurried into another 
world by the overflowing waves; is not this a mark of goodness as 
well as severity? Again, is it not a goodness in Him not to pour 
out judgments according to the greatness of his power? to go gradu 
ally to work with those whom he might in a moment blow to des 
truction with one breath of his mouth? Again, he sometimes exer 
ciseth judgments upon some, to form a new generation for himself, 
he destroyed an old world, to raise a new one more righteous, as & 
man pulls down his old buildings to erect a sounder and more stately 
fabric. To sum up what hath been said in this particular; how 
could God be a friend to goodness, if he were not an enemy to evil? 
how could he shew his enmity to evil, without revenging the abuse 
and contempt of his goodness? God would rather have the repen- 
tance of a sinner than his punishment; but the sinner would 
rather expose himself to the severest frowns of God, than pursue 
those methods wherein he hath settled the conveyances of his kind- 
ness; “You will not come to me that you might have life,” saith 
Christ. How is eternity of punishment inconsistent with the good- 
ness of God? nay, how can God be good without it? If wickedness 
always remain in the nature of man, is it not fit the rod should al- 
ways remain on the back of men? Isit a want of goodness that keeps 
an incorrigible offender in chains in a bridewell? While sin re- 
mains, it is fit it should be punished; would not God else be an 
enemy to his own goodness, and shew favor to that which doth 
abuse it, and is contrary to it? He hath threatened eternal flames 
to sinners, that he might the more strongly excite them to a refor- 
mation of their ways, and a practice of his precepts. In those threat- 
enings he hath manifested his goodness; and can it be bad in him 
to defend what his goodness hath commanded, and execute what 
his goodness hath threatened? His truth is also a part of his good- 
ness; for it is nothing but his goodness performing that which it ob- 
liged him to do. That is the first thing; severe judgments in the 
world are no impeachments of his goodness. 

Secondly, The afflictions God inflicts upon his servants, are no 


244. CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


violations of his goodness. Sometimes God afflicts men for their 
temporal and eternal good; for the good of their grace, in order to 
the good of their glory ; which is a more excellent good, than afflic- 
tions can be an evil. The heathens reflected upon Ulysses’ hard- 
ship, as a mark of Jupiter's goodness and love to him, that his virtue 
might be more conspicuous. By strong persecutions brought upon 
the church, her lethargy is cured, her chaff purged, the glorious 
fruit of the gospel brought forth in the lives of her children; the 
number of her proselytes multiply, and the strength of her weak 
ones is increased, by the testimonies of courage and constancy which 
the stronger present to them in their sufferings. Do these good ef- 
fects speak a want of goodness in God, who brings them into this 
condition? By those he cures his people of their corruptions, and 
promotes their glory, by giving them the honor of suffering for the 
truth, and raiseth their spirits to a divine pitch. The epistles of 
Paul to the Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians, wrote by him 
while he was in Nero’s chains, seem to have a higher strain than 
some of those he wrote when he was at liberty. As for afflictions, 
they are marks of a greater measure of fatherly goodness than he 
discovers to those that live in an uninterrupted prosperity, who are 
not dignified with that glorious title of sons, as those are that ‘he 
chasteneth” (Heb. xii. 6, 7). Can any question the goodness of the 
father that corrects his child to prevent his vice and ruin, and breed 
him up to virtue and honor? It would be a cruelty in a father leay- 
ing his child without chastisement, to leave him to that misery an 
ill education would reduce him to: “God judges us that we might 
not be condemned with the world” (1 Cor. xi. 82). Is it nota greater 
goodness to separate us from the world to happiness by his scourge, 
than to leave us to the condemnation of the world for our sins? Is 
it not a greater goodness to make us smart here, than to see us 
scorched hereafter? As he is our Shepherd, it is no part of his en- 
mity or ill-will to us, to make us feel sometimes the weight of his 
shepherd’s crook, to reduce us from our struggling. The visiting 
our transgressions with rods, and our iniquities with stripes, is one 
of the articles of the covenant of grace, wherein the greatest lustre 
of his goodness appears (Ps. Ixxxix. 83). The advantage and gain 
of our afflictions is a greater testimony of his goodness to us, than the 
pain can be of his unkindness; the smart is well recompensed by 
the accession of clearer graces. It is rather a high mark of good- 
ness, than an argument for the want of it, that he treats us as his 
children, and will not suffer us to run into that destruction we are 
more ambitious of, than the happiness he hath prepared for us, and 
by afflictions he fits us for the partaking of, by “ imparting his holi- 
ness,” together with the inflicting his rod (Heb. xi. 10). That is the 
third thing, God is good. 

LV. The fourth thing is the manifestation ofthis goodness in Crea- 
tion, Redemption, and Providence. 

First, In Oreation. This is apparent from what hath been said 
before, that no other attribute could be the motive of his creating, 
but his goodness; his goodness was the cause that he made any 
thing, and his wisdom was the cause that he made every thing in 


ON THE HOLINESS OF GOD. 245 


order and harmony. He pronounced “every thing good,” 7. e. such 
as became his goodness to bring forth into being, and rested in 
them more, as they were stamps of his goodness, than as the 
were marks of his power, or beams of his wisdom. And if all crea- 
tures were able to answer to this question, What that was which 
created them? the answer would be, Almighty power, but employed 
by the motion of infinite goodness.s All the varieties of creatures 
are so many apparitions of this goodness. Though God be one, yet 
he cannot appear as a God but in variety. As the greatness of 
power is not manifest but in variety of works, and an acute under- 
standing not discovered but in variety of reasonings, so an infinite 
goodness is not so apparent as in variety of communications. 

1. The creation proceeds from goodness. It is the goodness of 
God to extract such multitutes of things from the depths of nothing. 
Because God is good, things have a being; if he had not been good, 
nothing could have been good; nothing could have imparted that 
which it possessed not; nothing but goodness could have communi- 
cated to things an excellency, which before they wanted. Being is 
much more excellent than nothing. By this goodness, therefore, the 
whole creation was brought out of the dark womb of nothing; this 
formed their natures, this beautified them with their several orna- 
ments and perfections, whereby everything was enabled to act for 
the good of the common world. God did not create things because 
he was a living Being, but because he was a good Being. No crea- 
ture brought forth anything in the world merely because it is, but 
because it is good, and by a communicated goodness fitted for such 
a production. If God had been the creating principle of things only 
as he was a living Being, or as he was an understanding Being, then 
all things should have partaken of life and understanding, because 
all things were to bear some characters of the Deity upon them. If 
by understanding, solely, God were the Creator of all things, all things 
should have borne the mark of the Deity upon them, and should 
have been more or less understanding; but he created things as he 
was good, and by goodness he renders all things more or less like 
himself: hence everything is accounted more noble, not in regard 
of its being, but in regard of the beneficialness of its nature. The 
being of things was not the end of God in creating, but the goodness 
of their being. God did not rest from his works because they were 
his works, ¢. e. because they had a being; but because they had a 
good being (Gen. i.); because they were naturally useful to the uni- 
verse: nothing was more pleasing to him, than to behold those shad- 
ows and copies of his own goodness in his works. 

2. Creation was the first act of goodness without himself When 
he was alone from eternity, he contented himself with himself, 
abounding in his own blessedness, delighting in that abundance; he 
was incomprehensively rich in the possession of an unstained felicity. 
This creation was the first efflux of his goodness without himself: 
for the work of creation cannot be called a work of mercy." Mercy 
supposeth a creature miserable, but that which hath no being is sub- 


* Cusan, p. 228. t Petay. Theolog. Dogmat. Tom. i. v. 402. 
4 Lessius, de Perfect. Div, p. 100. 


246 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


ject to no misery; for to be miserable supposeth a nature in being, 
and deprived of that good which belongs to the pleasure and felicity 
of nature; but since there was no being, there could be no misery. 
The creation, therefore, was not an act of mercy, but an act of sole 
goodness; and, therefore, it was the speech of an heathen, that when 
God first set upon the creation of the world, he transformed himself 
into love and goodness, Eis towta wetuBayOue roy Osdy uédhorta Onurovyyeiv,® 
This led forth, and animated his power, the first moment it drew the 
universe out of the womb of nothing. And, 

3. There is not one creature but hath a character of his goodness. 
The whole world is a map to represent, and a herald to proclaim 
this perfection. It is as difficult not to see something of it in every 
creature with the eye of our minds, as it is not to see the beams of 
the shining sun with those off our bodies. “ He is good to all” (Ps. 
_ exly. 9); he is, therefore, good in all; not a drop of the creation, but 
is a drop of his goodness. ‘These are the colors worn upon the heads 
of every creature. Asin every spark the light of the fire is mani- 
fested, so doth every grain of the creation wear the visible badges 
of this perfection. In all the lights, the Father of Lights hath made 
the riches of goodness apparent; no creature is silent in it; it is legi- 
ble to all nations in every work of his hands. That, as it is said of 
Christ (Ps. xl. 7), “‘In the volume of thy book it is written of me:” 
In the volume of the book of the Scripture it is written of me, and 
my goodness in redemption: so it may be said of God, In the vol- 
ume of the book of the creature it 1s written of me, and my good- 
ness in creation. Every creature is a page in this book, whose “‘line 
is gone through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world” 
(Ps. xix. 4); though, indeed, the less goodness in some is obscured 
by the more resplendent goodness he hath imparted unto others. 
What an admirable piece of goodness is it to communicate life to a 
fly! How should we stand gazing upon it, till we turn our eye in- 
wards, and view our own frame, which is much more ravishing ! 

But let us see the goodness of God in the creation of man,—in 
the being and nature of man. God hath, with a liberal hand, conferred 
‘upon every creature the best being it was capable of in that station 
and order, and conducing to that end and use in the world he in- 
tended it for. But when you have run over all the measures of 
goodness God hath poured forth upon other creatures, you will find 
a greater fulness of it in the nature of man, whom he hath placed in 
a more sublime condition, and endued with choicer prerogatives, 
than other creatures: he was made but little lower than the angels, 
and much more loftily crowned with glory and honor than other 
creatures (Ps. vii. 5), Had it not been for Divine goodness, that ex- 
cellent creature had lain wrapt up in the abyss of nothing; or if he 
had called it out of nothing, there might have been less of skill and 
Jess of goodness displayed in the forming of it, and a lesser kind of 
being imparted to it, than what he hath conferred, 

1. How much of goodness is visible in his body! God drew out 
some part of the dust of the ground, and copied out this perfection, 
as well as that of his power, on that mean matter, by erecting it into 

x Pherecydes. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 947 


the form of a man, quickening that earth by the inspiration of a 
“living soul” (Gen. ii. 7): of this matter he composed an excellent 
body, in regard of the majesty of the face, erectness of its stature, 
and grace of every part. How neatly hath he wrought this “taber- 
nacle of clay, this earthly house,” as the apostle calls 1t (2 Cor. v. 1)! 
a curious wrought piece of needle-work, a comely artifice (Ps. cxxxix. 
15), an embroidered case for an harmonious lute. What variety of 
members, with a due proportion, without confusion, beautiful to 
sight, excellent for use, powerful for strength! It hath eyes to 
conduct its motion, to serve in matter for the food, and delight of 
the understanding ; ears to let in the pleasure of sound, to convey 
intelligence of the affairs of the world, and the counsels of heaven, 
to a more noble mind. It hath a tongue to express and sound forth 
what the learned inhabitant in it thinks; and hands to act what the 
inward counseller directs; and feet to support the fabric. It is tem- 
pered with a kindly heat, and an oily moisture for motion, and en- 
dued with conveyances for air, to qualify the fury of the heat, and 
nourishment to supply the decays of moisture. It is a cabinet fitted 
by Divine goodness for the enclosing a rich jewel; a palace made 
of dust, to lodge in it the viceroy of the world; an instrument dis- 
posed for the operations of the nobler soul which he intended to 
unite to that refined matter. What is there in the situation of every 
part, in the proportion of every member, in the usefulness of every 
limb and string to the offices of the body, and service of the soul; 
what is there in the whole structure that doth not inform us of the 
goodness of God? 

2. But what is this to that goodness which shines in the nature of 
the soul? Who can express the wonders of that comeliness that is 
wrapped up in this mask of clay? A soul endued with a clearness 
of understanding and freedom of will: faculties no sooner framed, 
but they were able to produce the operation they were intended for ; 
a soul that excelled the whole world, that comprehended the whole 
creation; a soul that evidenced the extent of its skill in giving 
names to all that variety of creatures which had issued out of the 
hand of Divine Power (Gen. ii. 19); a soul able to discover the na- 
ture of other creatures, and manage and conduct their motions. In 
the ruins of a palace we may see the curiosity displayed, and the cost 
expended in the building of it; in the ruins of this fallen structure, 
we still find it capable of a mighty knowledge; a reason able to reg- 
ulate affairs, govern states, order more mighty and massy creatures, 
find owt witty inventions; there is still an understanding to irradiate 
the other faculties, a mind to contemplate its own Creator, a judg- 
ment to discern the differences between good and evil, vice and vir- 
tue, which the goodness of God hath not granted to any lower crea- 
ture. These excellent faculties, together with the power of self-re- 
flection, and the swiftness of the mind in running over the things of 
the creation, are astonishing gleams of the vast goodness of that Di- 
vine Hand which ennobled this frame. To the other creatures of 
this world, God had given out some small mites from his treasury ; 
but in the perfections of man, he hath opened the more secret parts 


248 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of his exchequer, and liberally bestowed those doles, whick he hath 
not expended upon the other creatures on earth. 

8. Besides this, he did not only make man so noble a creature in 
his frame, but ‘ he made him after his own image in holiness.” He 
imparied to him a spark of his own comeliness, in order to a com- 
munion with himself in happiness, had man stood his ground in his 
tria!, aud used those faculties well, which had been the gift of his 
Bountiful Creator: he ‘‘made man after his image,” after his own 
imaze (Gen. i. 26, 27); that as a coin bears the image of the prince, 
so did tue soul of man the “image of God :” not the image of angels, 
though the speech be in the plural number: “ Let us make man.” 
It is not to acreature, but to a Creator ; let ‘‘us,” that are his makers, 
make him in the image of his makers. God created man, angels did 
not create him; God created man in his “ own” image, not, there- 
fore, in the image of angels: the nature of God, and the nature of 
angels, are not the same. Where, in the whole Scripture, is man 
said to be made after the image of angels? God made man not in 
the image of angels, to be conformed to them as his prototype, but 
in the image of the blessed God, to be conformed to the Divine na- 
ture: that as he was conformed to the image of his holiness, he 
might also partake of the image of his blessedness, which, without it, 
could not be attained: for as the felicity of God could not be clear 
without an unspotted holiness, so neither can there be a glorious 
happiness without purity in the creature; this God provided for in 
his creation of man, giving him such accomplishments in those two 
excellent pieces of soul and body, that nothing was wanting to him 
but bis own will, to instate him m an invariable felicity. He was 
possessed with such a nature by the hand of Divine Goodness, such 
a loftiness of understanding, and purity of faculties, that he might 
have been for ever happy as well as the standing angels: and he 
was placed in such a condition, that moved the envy of fallen spirits ; 
he had as much grace bestowed upon him, as was proportionable to 
that covenant God then made with him: the tenor of which was, 
that his life should continue so long as his obedience, and his happi- 
ness endure so long as his integrity: and as God, by creation, had 
given him an integrity of nature, so he had given him a power to 
persist in it, if he would. Herein is the goodness of God displayed, 
that he made man after his own image. | 

4. As to the life of man in this world, God, by an immense good- 
ness, copied out in him the whole creation, and made him an abridg- 
ment of the higher and lower world,—a little world in a greater one. 
The link of the two worlds, of heaven and earth, as the spiritual and 
corporeal natures are united in him, the earth in the dust of his body, 
and the heavens in the crystal of his soul: he hath the upper springs 
of the life of angels in his reason, and the nether springs of the lite 
of animals in his sense. God displayed those virtues in man, which 
he had discovered in the rest of the lower creation; but, besides the 
communication which he had with earth in his nature, God gave 
him a participation with heaven in his spirit. A mere bodily being 
he hath given to the heavens, earth, elements; a vegetative life, or a 
life of growth, he hath vouchsafed to the plants of the ground: he 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. DAG 


hath stretched out his liberality more to animals and beasts, by giv- 
ing them sense. All these hath his goodness linked in man, being, 
life, sense, with a richer dole than any of those creatures have re- 
ceived in a rational, intellectual life, whereby he approacheth to the 
nature of angels. This some of the Jews understood (Gen. i. 7): 
“God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became 
a living soul,” on, breath of lives, in the Hebrew; not one sort 
of life, but that variety of lives which he had imparted to other crea- 
tures: all the perfections scattered in other creatures do unitedly 
meet in man: so that Philo might well call him ‘“‘every creature, the 
model of the whole creation :” his soul is heaven, and his body is 
earth.y So that the immensity of his goodness to man, is as great 
as all that goodness you behold in sensitive and intelligible things. 

5. All this was free goodness. God eternally possessed his own 
felicity in himself, and had no need of the existence of anything 
without himself for his satisfaction. Man, before his being, could 
have no good qualities to invite God to make him so excellent a 
fabric: for, being nothing, he was as unable to allure and merit, as 
to bring himself into being; nay, he created a multitude of men, 
who, he foresaw would behave themselves in as ungrateful a manner, 
as if they had not been his creatures, but had bestowed that rich 
variety upon themselves without the hand of a superior Benefactor. 
How great is this goodness, that hath made us models of the whole 
creation, tied together heaven and earth in our nature, when he 
might have ranked us among the lower creatures of the earth, made 
us mere bodies as the stones, or mere animals as the brutes, and de- 
nied us those capacious souls, whereby we might both know him 
and enjoy him! What could man have been more, unless he had 
been the original, which was impossible? He could not be greater 
than to be an image of the Deity, an epitome of the whole. Well 
may we cry out with the Psalmist (Ps. vii. 1, 4), ‘‘O Lord, our 
Lord, how excellent is thy name,” the name of thy goodness, “in 
all the earth!” How, more particularly in man! ‘ What is man 
that thou art mindful of him?” What is a little clod of earth and 
dust, that thou shouldst ennoble him with so rich a nature, and en- 
grave upon him such characters of thy immense Being? 

6. The goodness of God appears in the conveniences he provided 
for, and gave to man. As God gave him a being morally perfect in 
regard of righteousness, so he gave him a being naturally perfect in 
regard of delightful conveniences, which was the fruit of excellent 
goodness; since there was no quality in man, to invite God to pro- 
vide him so rich a world, nor to bestow upon him so comely a being. 

(1). The world was made for man. Since angels have not need 
of anything in this world, and are above the conveniences of earth 
and air, it will follow, that man, being the noblest creature on the 
earth, was the more immediate end of the visible creation. All in- 
ferior things are made to be subservient to those that have a more 
excellent prerogative of nature; and, therefore, all things for man, 
who exceeds all the rest in dignity: as man was made for the honor 
of God, so the world was made for the support and delight of man, 

y Eugubin, lib. v. cap. 9. 


250 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


in order to his performing the service due from him to God. The 
empire God settled man in as his leutenant over the works of his 
hands, when he gave him possession of paradise, is a clear manifesta- 
tion of it: God put all things under his feet, and gave him a de- 
puted dominion over the rest of the creatures under himself, as the 
absolute sovereign (Ps. viii. 6—8); “Thou madest him to have do- 
minion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under 
his feet, all sheep and oxen; yea, and the beasts of the field, the fowl 
of the air, and the fish of the sea; yea, and whatsoever passeth over 
the paths of the sea.” What less is witnessed to by the calamity all 
creatures were subjected to by the corruption of man’s nature? 
Then was the earth cursed, and a black cloud flung upon the beauty 
of the creation, and the strength and vigor of it languisheth to this 
day under the curse of God (Gen. i. 17, 18), and groans under that 
‘vanity the sin of man subjected it to (Rom. viii. 20, 22). The trea- 
sons of man against God brought misery upon that which was framed 
for the use of man: as when the majesty of a prince is violated by 
the treason and rebellion of his subjects, all that which belongs to 
them, and was, before the free gift of the prince to them, is forfeit ; 
their habitations, palaces, cattle, all that belongs to them bear the 
marks of his sovereign fury: had not the delicacies of the earth been 
made for the use of man, they had not fallen under the indignation 
of God upon the sin of man. God crowned the earth with his good- 
ness to gratify man; gave man a right to serve himself of the de- 
lightful creatures he had provided (Gen. 1. 28—380); yea, and after 
man had forfeited all by sin, and God had washed again the creature 
in a deluge, he renews the creation, and delivers it again into the 
hand of man, binding all creatures to pay a respect to him, and re- 
cognise him as their Lord, either spontaneously, or by force; and 
commissions them all to fill the heart of man with “food and glad- 
ness” (Gen. ix. 2, 8): and he loves all creatures as they conduce to 
the good of, and are serviceable to, his prime creature, which he set 
up for his own glory: and therefore, when he loves a person, he 
loves what belongs to him: he takes care of Jacob and his cattle: 
of penitent Nineveh and their cattle (Jonah iv. 11): as when he 
sends judgments upon men he destroys their goods. 

9. God richly furnished the world for man. He did not only erect 
a stately palace for his habitation, but provided all kind of furniture 
as a mark of his goodness, for the entertainment of his creature, man: 
he arched over his habitation with a bespangled heaven, and floored 
it with a solid earth, and spread a curious wrought tapestry upon the 
ground where he was to tread, and seemed to sweep all the rubbish 
of the chaos to the two uninhabitable poles. When at the first crea- 
tion of the matter the waters covered the earth, and rendered it un- 
inhabitable for man, God drained them into the proper channels he 
had founded for them, and set a bound that they might not pass 
over, that they turn not again to “cover the earth” (Gen 1.9.) They 
fled and hasted away to their proper stations (Ps. civ. 7—9), as if 
they were ambitious to deny their own nature, and content them- 
selves with an imprisonment for the convenient habitation of Him 
who was to be appointed Lord of the world. He hath set up stand- 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 251 


ing lights in the heaven, to direct our motion, and to regulate the 
seasons: the sun was created, that man might see to “ go forth to his 
labor” (Ps. civ. 22, 28): both sun and moon, though set in the 
heaven, were formed to “ give light” on the earth (Gen. i. 15, 17). 
The air is his aviary, the sea and rivers his fish-ponds, the valleys 
his granary, the mountains his magazine; the first afford man crea- 
tures for nourishment, the other metals for perfection: the animals 
were created for the support of the life of man; the herbs of the 
ground were provided for the maintenance of their lives; and gen- 
tle dews, and moistening showers, and, in some places, slimy floods 
appointed to render the earth fruitful, and capable to offer man and 
beast what was fit for their nourishment. He hath peopled every 
element with a variety of creatures both for necessity and delight ; 
all furnished with useful qualities for the service of man. There is 
not the most despicable thing in the whole creation but it is endued 
with a nature to contribute something for our welfare: either as food 
to nourish us when we are healthful ; or as medicine to cure us when 
we are distempered ; or as a garment to clothe us when we are naked, 
and arm us against the cold of the season; or as a refreshment when 
we are weary; or as a delight when we are sad: all serve for neces- 
sity or ornament, either to spread our table, beautify our dwellings, 
furnish our closets, or store our wardrobes (Ps. civ. 24): “The whole 
earth is full of his riches.” Nothing but by the rich goodness of 
God is exquisitely accommodated, in the numerous brood of things, 
immediately or mediately for the use of man; all, in the issue, con- 
spire together to render the world a delightful residence for man ; 
and, therefore, all the living creatures were brought by God to at- 
tend upon man after his creation, to receive a mark of his dominion 
over them, by the “imposition of their names” (Gen. ii. 19, 20). He 
did not only give variety of senses to man, but provided variety of 
delightful objects in the world for every sense; the beauties of hght 
and colors for our eye, the harmony of sounds for our ear, the fra- 
grancy of odors for our nostrils, and a delicious sweetness for our 
palates: some have qualities to pleasure; all, everything, a quality 
‘to pleasure, one or other: he doth not only present those things to 
our view, as rich men do in ostentation their goods, he makes us the 
enjoyers as well as the spectators, and gives us the use as well as the 
sight ; and, therefore, he hath not only given us the sight, but the 
knowledge of them: he hath set up a sun in the heavens, to expose 
their outward beauty and conveniences to our sight; and the candle 
of the Lord is in us, to expose their inward qualities and conve- 
niences to our knowledge, that we might serve ourselves of, and re- 
joice in, all this furniture wherewith he hath garnished the world, 
and have wherewithal to employ the inquisitiveness of our reason, 
as well as gratify the pleasures of our sense; and, particularly, God 
provided for innocent man a delightful mansion-house, a place of 
more special beauty and curiosity, the garden of Eden, a delightful 
paradise, a model of the beauties and pleasures of another world, 
wherein he had placed whatsoever might contribute to the felicity of 
a rational and animal life, the life of a creature composed of mire 
and dust, of sense and reason (Gen. ii. 9). Besides the other delica- 


952 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


cies consigned, in that place, to the use of man, there was a tree of 
life provided to maintain his being, and nothing denied, in the whole 
compass of that territory, but one tree, that of the knowledge of 
good and evil, which was no mark of an ill-will in his Creator to 
him, but 2 reserve of God’s absolute sovereignty, and a trial of man’s 
voluntary obedience. What blur was it to the goodness of God, to 
reserve one tree for his own propriety, when he had given to man, 
in all the rest, such numerous marks of his rich bounty and good- 
ness? What Israel, after man’s fall, enjoyed sensibly, Nehemiah 
calls “great goodness” (Neh. ix. 25). How inexpressible, then, was 
that goodness manifested to innocent man, when so small a part of 
it, indulged to the Israelites after the curse upon the ground, is call- 
ed, as truly it merits, such great goodness ! How can we pass through 
any part of this great city, and cast our eyes upon the well-furnished 
shops, stored with all kinds of commodities, without reflections upon 
this goodness of God starting up before our eyes in such varieties, 
and plainly telling us that he hath accommodated all things for our 
use, suited things, both to supply our need, content a reasonable 
curiosity, and delight us in our aims at, and passage to, our supreme 
end! 

(3.) The goodness of God appears in the laws he hath given to 
man, the covenant he hath made with him. It had not been agree- 
able to the goodness of God to let a creature, governable by a law, 
be without a law to regulate him; his goodness then which had 
broke forth in the creation, had suffered an eclipse and obscurity in 
his government. As infinite goodness was the motive to create, so 
infinite goodness was the motive of his government. And this 
appears, | 

[1.] In the fitting the law to the nature of man. It was rather 
below than above his strength; he had an integrity in his nature to 
answer the righteousness of the precept. God created ‘‘man 
upright” (Eccles. vii. 29); his nature was suited to the law, and the 
law to his nature; it was not above his understanding to know it, 
nor his will to embrace it, nor his passions to be regulated by it. 
The law and his nature were like to exact straight lines, touching 
one another in every part when joined together. God exacted no 
more by his law than what was written by nature in his heart: he 
had a knowledge by creation to observe the law of his creation, and 
he fell not for want of a righteousness in his nature: he was enabled 
for more than was commanded him, but wilfully indisposed to less 
than he was able to perform. The precepts were easy, not only be: 
coming the authority of a sovereign to exact, but the goodness of a 
father to demand, and the ingenuity of a creature and a son to pay. 
“His commands are not grievous” (1 John v. 3); the observance of 
them had filled the spirit of man with an extraordinary contentment. 
Tt had been no less a pleasure and a delightful satisfaction to have 
kept the law in a created state, than it is to keep it in some measure 
in a renewed state. The renewed nature finds a suitableness in the 
law to kindle a “delight” (Ps. i. 2): it could not then have anywise 
shook the nature of an upright creature, nor have been a burden 
too heavy for his shoulders to bear. Though he had not a grace 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 253 


given him above nature, yet he had not a law given him that sur- 
mounted his nature: it did not exceed his created strength, and was 
suited to the dignity and nobility of a rational nature. It was a 
“just law” (Rom. vu. 12), and, therefore, not above the nature of 
the subject that was bound to obey it. And had it been impossible 
to be observed, it had been unrighteous to be enacted: it had not 
been a matter of Divine praise, and that seven times a day ; as it is, 
“Seven times a day do I praise thee, because of thy righteous judg- 
ments” (Ps. cxix. 164). The law was so righteous, that Adam had 
every whit as much reason to bless God in his innocence for the 
righteousness of it, as David had with the relics of enmity against 
it: his goodness shines so much in his law, as merits our praise of 
him, as he is a sovereign Lawgiver, as well as a gracious Benefactor, 
in the imparting to us a being. ; 

[2.] In fitting it for the happiness of man. For the satisfaction 
of his soul, which finds a reward in the very act of keeping it, (Ps. 
exix. 165), ‘Great peace in the loving it;” for the preservation of 
human society, wherein consists the external felicity of man. It 
had been inconsistent with the Divine goodness to enjoin man any- 
thing that should be oppressive and uncomfortable. Bitterness can- 
not come from that which is altogether sweet: goodness would not 
have obliged the creature to anything, but what is not only free from 
damaging him, but wholly conducing to his welfare, and perfective 
of his nature. Infinite wisdom could not order anything but what 
was agreeable to infinite goodness. As his laws are the most ration- 
al, as being the contrivance of infinite wisdom; so they are the best, 
as being the fruit of infinite goodness. His laws are not only the 
acts of his sovereign authority, but the effluxes of his loving-kind- 
ness, and the conductors of man to an enjoyment of a greater bounty: 
he minds as well the promotion of his creatures’ felicity, as the as- 
serting his own authority ; as good princes make laws for their sub- 
jects’ benefit as well as their own honor. What was said of a more 
difficult and burdensome law long after man’s fall, may much more 
be said of the easy law of nature in the state of man’s innocence, 
that it was “for our good” (Deut. x. 12, 13). He never pleaded 
with the Israelites for the observation of his commands upon the 
account of his authority, so much as upon the score of their benefit 
by them (Deut. iv. 40; xii. 28). And when his precepts were 
broken, he seems sometimes to be more grieved for men’s impairing 
their own felicity by it, than for their violating his authority: “ O, 
that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments, then had thy peace 
been as a river!” (Isa. xlviii. 18). Goodness cannot prescribe a 
thing prejudicial: whatsoever it enjoins, is beneficial to the spiritual 
and eternal happiness of the rational creature: this was both the 
design of the law given, and the end of the law. Christ, in his an- 
swer to the young man’s question, refers him to the moral law, 
which was the law of nature in Adam, as that whereby eternal life 
was to be gained: which evidenceth, that when the law was first 
given as the covenant of works, it was for the happiness of man ; 
and the end of giving it was, that man might have eternal life by 
it: there would else be no strength or truth in that answer of Christ 


954 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


to that Ruler. And, therefore, Stephen calls the law given by 
Moses, which was the same with the law of nature m Adam, “the 
living oracles” (Acts vii. 88). He enjoined men’s services to them 
not simply for his own glory, but his glory in men’s welfare: as if 

there were any being better than himself, his goodness and righteous- 
ness would guide him to love that better than himself; because it is 
good and righteous to love that best which is most amiable: so, if 

there were any that could do us more good, and shower down more 

happiness upon us than himself, he would be content we should 
obey that as sovereign, and steer our course according to his laws: 

“Tf God be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him” (1 

Kings xviii. 21). If the observance of the precepts of Baal be 

more beneficial to you; if you can advance your nature by his ser- 

vice, and gain a more mighty crown of happiness than by mine, fol- 

low him with all my heart: I never intended to enjom you anything 

to impair, but increase your happiness. The chief design of God 

in his law is the happiness of the subject; and obedience is intended 

by him as a means for the attaining of happiness, as well as presery- 

ing his own sovereignty: this is the reason why he wished that 
Isracl had walked in his ways, “that their time might have endured 
forever” (Ps. lxxxi. 18, 15, 16). And by the same reason, this was 

his intendment in his law given to man, and his covenant made with 

man at the creation, that he might be fed with the finest part of his 

bounty, and be satisfied with honey out of the eternal Rock of Ages. 

To paraphrase his expression there :—The goodness of God appears. 
further, 

[3]. In engaging man to obedience by promises and threatenings. 
A threatening is only mentioned (Gen. i. 17), but a promise is 1m- 
plied: if eternal death were fixed for transgression, eternal life was 
thereby designed for obedience: and that 1t was so, the answer of 
Christ to the Ruler evidenceth, that the first intendment of the pre- 
cept was the eternal life of the subject, ordered to obey it. 

1st. God might have acted, in settling his law, only as a sover- 
eign. Though he might have dealt with man upon the score of 
his absolute dominion over him as his creature,.and signified his 
pleasure upon the right of his sovereignty, threatening only a pen- 
alty if man transgressed, without the promising a bountiful acknow- 
ledgment of his obedience by a reward as a benefactor: yet he 
would treat with man in gentle methods, and rule him in a track 
of sweetness as well as sovereignty: he would preserve the rights 
of his dominion in the authority of his commands, and honor the 
condescensions of his goodness in the allurements of a promise. 
He that might have solely demanded a compliance with his will, 
would kindly article with him, to oblige him to observe him out 
of love to himself as well as duty to his Creator; that he might 
have both the interest of avoiding the threatened cvil to affright 
him, and the interest of attaining the promised good to allure him 
to obedience. How doth he value the title of Benefactor above 
that of a Lord; when he so kindly solicits, as well as commands ; 
and engageth to reward that obedience which he might have abso- 
lutely claimed as his due, by enforcing fears of the severest penalty ! 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 255 


His sovereignty seems to stoop below itself for the elevation of his 
goodness; and he is pleased to have his kindness more taken notice 
of than his authority. Nothing imported more condescension than 
his bringing forth his law in the nature of a covenant, whereby he 
seems to humble himself, and veil his superiority to treat with man 
as his equal, that the very manner of his treatment might oblige 
him in the richest promises he made to draw him, and the startling 
threatenings he pronounced to link him to his obedience: and, 
therefore, is it observable, that when after the transgression of 
Adam God comes to deal with him, he doth not do it in that thun- 
dering rigor, which might have been expected from an enraged 
sovereign, but in a gentle examination (Gen. i. 11, 18): “ Hast 
thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst 
not eat?” To the woman, he said no more than, ‘“ What is this 
that thou hast done?” And in the Scripture we find, when he 
cites the Israelites before him for their sin, he expostulates with 
them not so much upon the absolute right he had to challenge 
their obedience, as upon the equity and reasonableness of his law 
which they had transgressed; that by the same argument of sweet- 
ness, wherewith he would attract them to their duty, he might 
shame them after their offence (Isa. 1. 2; Hzek. xviii. 25). 

2d. By the threatenings he manifests his goodness as well as by 
his promises. He promises that he might be a rewarder, and 
threatens that he might not be a punisher; the one is to elevate 
our hope, and the other to excite our fear, the two passions whereby 
the nature of man is managed in the world. He imprints upon 
man sentiments of a misery by sin, in his thundering commination, 
that he might engage him the more to embrace and be guided by 
the motives of sweetness in his gracious promises. The design of 
them was to preserve man in his due bounds, that God might not 
have occasion to blow upon him the flames of his justice; to sup- 
press those irregular passions, which the nature of man (though 
created without any disorder) was capable of entertaining upon the 
appearance of suitable objects; and to keep the waves from swell 
ing upon any turning wind, that so man, being modest in the use 
of the goodness God had allowed him, might still be capable of 
fresh streams of Divine bounty, without ever falling under his 
righteous wrath for any transgression. What a prospect of good- 
ness is in this proceeding, to disclose man’s happiness to be as du- 
rable as his innocence; and set before a rational creature the ex- 
tremest misery due to his crime, to affright him from neglecting bis 
Creator, and making unworthy returns to his goodness! What 
could be done more by goodness to suit that passion of fear which 
was implanted in the nature of man, than to assure him he should 
not degenerate from the righteousness of his nature, and violate the 
authority of his Creator, without falling from his own happiness, 
wid sinking into the most deplorable calamity ! 

3d. The reward he promised manifests yet further his goodness to 
man. It was his goodness to intend a reward to man; no necessity 
could oblige God to reward man, had he continued obedient in his 
created state: for in all rewards which are truly merited, beside 


256 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


some kind of equality to be considered between the person doing 
service and the person rewarding, and also between the act_per- 
formed and the reward bestowed, there must also be considered the 
condition of the person doing the service, that he is not obliged to 
do it as a duty, but is at his own choice whether to offer it or no. 
But man, being wholly dependent on God in his being and preser- 
vation, having nothing of his own, but what he had received from 
the hands of Divine bounty, his service was due by the strongest 
obligation to God (1 Cor. iv. 7). But there was no natural engage- 
ment on God to return a reward to him; for man could return no- 
thing of his own but that only which he had received from his 
Creator. It must be pure goodness that gives a gracious reward for 
a due debt, to receive his own from man, and return more than he 
had received. A Divine reward doth far surmount the value of a 
rational service. It was, therefore, a mighty goodness to stipulate 
with man, that upon his obedience he should enjoy an immortality 
in that nature. The article on man’s part was obedience, which 
was necessarily just, and founded in the nature of man; he had 
been unjust, ungrateful, and violated all laws of righteousness, had 
he committed any act unworthy of one that had been so great a 
subject of Divine liberality.2 But the article on God’s part, of giv- 
ing a perpetual blessedness to innocent man, was not founded upon 
rules of strict justice and righteousness, for that would have argued 
God to be a debtor to man; but that God cannot be to the work of 
his hands, that had received the materials of his being and acting 
from him, as the vessel doth from the potter. But this was founded 
only on the goodness of the Divine nature, whereby he cannot but 
be kind to an innocent and holy creature. The nature of God in- 
clined him to it by the rules of goodness, but the service of man 
could not claim it by the rules of justice without a stipulation ; so 
that the covenant whereby God obliged himself to continue the 
happiness of man upon the continuance of his obedience, in the 
original of it, springs from pure goodness ; though the performance 
of it, upon the fulfilling condition required in the creature, was 
founded upon the rules of righteousness and truth, after Divine 
goodness had brought it forth. God did create man for a reward 
and happiness; now God’s implanting in the nature of man a desire 
after happiness, and some higher happiness than he had in creation 
invested him in, doth evidence that God did not create man only 
for his own service, but for his attaining a greater happiness. All 
rational creatures are possessed with a principle of seeking after 
good, the highest good, and God did not plant in man this principle 
in vain; it had not been goodness to put this principle in man, if 
he had designed never to bestow a happiness on man for his obe- 
dience: this had been repugnant to the goodness and wisdom of 
God; and the Scripture doth very emphatically express the felicity 
of man to be the design of God in the first forming him and mould- 
ing him a creature, as well as working him a new creature; “ He 
that hath wrought us for the self-same thing 1s God” (2 Cor. v. 1, 5): 
he framed this earthly tabernacle for a residence in an eternal habi- 
z Amyral. Dissertat. pp. 637, 638. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD, 257 


tation, and a better habitation than an earthly paradise. What we 
expect in the resurrection, that very same thing God did in crea- 
tion intend us for; but since the corruption of our natures, we must 
undergo a dissolution of our bodies, and may have just reason of a 
despondency, since sin hath seemed to change the course of God's 
bounty, and brought us under a curse. He hath given us the ear 
nest of his Spirit, as an assurance that he will perform that very 
selfsame thing, the conferring that happiness upon renewed crea- 
tures for which he first formed man in creation, when he compacted 
his earthly tabernacle of the dust of the ground, and reared it up 
before him. 

4th. It was a mighty goodness that God should give man an eternal 
reward. That an eternity of reward was promised, is implied in the 
death that was threatened upon transgression: whatsoever you con- 
ceive the threatened death to be, either for nature, or duration upon 
transgression; of the same nature and duration you must suppose 
the life to be, which is implied upon his constancy in his integrity. 
As sin would render him an eternal object of God’s hatred, so 
his obedience would render him an eternally amiable object to his 
Creator, as the standing angels are preserved and confirmed in an 
entire felicity and glory. Though the threatening be only expressed 
by God (Gen. 11. 17), yet the other is implied, and might easily be 
concluded from it by Adam. And one reason why God only ex- 
pressed the threatening, and not the promise, was, because man 
might collect some hopes and expectations of a perpetual happiness 
from that image of God which he beheld in himself, and from the 
large provision he had made for him in the world, and the com- 
mission given him to increase and multiply, and to rule as a lord 
over his other works; whereas he could not so easily have imagined 
himself capable of being exposed to such an extraordinary calamity 
as an eternal death, without some signification of it from God. It 
is easily concludable, that eternal life was supposed to be promised, 
to be conferred upon him if he stood, as well as eternal death to be 
inflicted en him if he rebelled.2 Now this eternal life was not due 
to his nature, but it was a pure beam, and gift of Divine goodness; 
for there was no proportion between man’s service in his innocent 
estate, and a reward so great both for nature and duration: it was a 
higher reward than can be imagined either due to the nature of man, 
or upon any natural right claimable by his obedience. All that 
could be expected by him was but a natural happiness, not a super- 
natural: as there was no necessity upon the account of natural 
righteousness, so there was no necessity upon the account of the 
goodness of God to elevate the nature of man to a supernatural 
happiness, merely because he created him: for though it be necessary 
for God, when he would create, in regard of his wisdom, to create 
for some end, yet it was not necessary that end should be a super- 
natural end and happiness, since a natural blessedness had been 
sufficient for man. And though God, in creating angels and men 
intellectual and rational creatures, did make them necessary for 
himself and his own glory, yet it was not necessarily for him to 


* Suarez. de Gratia, Vol. I. pp. 126, 127. 
VOL. 11.—17 


258 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


order either angels’ or men to such a felicity as consists ma clear 
vision, and so high a fruition, of himself: for all other things are 
made by him for himself, and yet not for the vision of himself, God 
might have created man only for a natural happiness, according to 
the perfection of his natural faculties, and had dealt bountifully 
with him, if he had never intended him a supernatural blessedness 
and an eternal recompense: but what a largeness of goodness is 
here, to design man, in his creation, for so rich a blessedness as an 
eternal life, with the fruition of himself! He hath not only given to 
man all things which are necessary, but designed for man that which 
the poor creature could not imagine: he garnished the earth for him, 
and garnished him for an eternal felicity, had he not, by shghting 
the goodness of God, stripped himself of the present, and forfeited 
his future blessedness. 

Secondly, The manifestation of this goodness in Redemption. ‘The 
whole gospel is nothing but one entire mirror of Divine goodness: 
the whole of redemption is wrapped up in that one expression of 
the angels’ song (Luke n. 14), * Good-will towards men.” ‘The 
angels sang but one song betore, which is upon record, but the 
matter of it seems to be the wisdom of God chiefly in creation (Job 
xxxviii, 7; compare chap. ix. 5, 6, 8, 9). The angels are there 
meant by the “ morning stars ;” the visible stars of heaven were not 
distinctly formed when the foundations of the earth were laid: and 
the title of the sons of God verifies it, since none but creatures of 
understanding are dignified in Seripture with that title. There they 
celebrate his wisdom in creation; here his goodness in redemption, 
which is the entire matter of the song. 

i. Goodness was the spring of redemption. All and every part 
of it owes only to this perfection the appearance of it in the world. 
This only excited wisdom to bring forth from so great an evil as the 
apostacy of man, so great a good as the recovery of him. When 
man fell from his created goodness, God would evidence that he 
could not fall from his infinite goodness: that the greatest evil could 
not surmount the ability of his wisdom to contrive, nor the riches 
of his bounty to present us a remedy for it. Divine Goodness would 
not stand by a spectator, without being reliever of that misery man 
had plunged himself into; but by astonishing methods it would 
recover him to happiness, who had wrested himself out of his hands, 
to fling himself into the most deplorable calamity: and it was the 
greater, since it surmounted those natural inclinations, and those 
strong provocations which he had to shower down the power of his 
wrath. What could be the source of such a procedure, but this 
excellency of Divine nature, since no violence could force him, nor 
was there any merit to persuade to such a restoration? This, under 
the name of his “love,” is rendered the sole cause of the redeemme 
death of the Son: it was to commend his love with the highest 
gloss, and in so singular a manner that had not its parallel in nature, 
nor in all his other works, and reaches in the brightness of it beyond 
the manifested extent of any other attribute (Rom. v. 8). It must 
be only a miraculous goodness that induced him to expose the life 
of his Son to those difficulties in the world, and death upon the cross, 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 259 


for the freedom of sordid rebels: his great end was to give sucha 
demonstration of the liberality of his nature, as might be attractive 
to his creature, remove its shakings and tremblings, and encourage 
its approaches to him. It is in this he would not only manifest his 
love, but assume the name of “Love.” By this name the Holy 
Ghost calls him, in relation to this good will manifested in his Son 
(1 John iv. 8, 9), “God is love.” In this is manifested the love of 
God towards us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into 
the world, that we might “live through him.” He would take the 
name he never expressed himself in before. He was Jehovah, in 
regard of the truth of his promise; so he would be known of old: 
he is Goodness, in regard of the grandeur of his affection in the 
mission of his Son: and, therefore, he would be known by the name 
of Love now, in the days of the gospel. 

u. It was a pure goodness. He was under no obligation to pity 
our misery, and repair our ruins: he might have stood to the terms 
of the first covenant, and exacted our eternal death; since we had 
committed an infinite transgression: he was under no tie to put off 
the robes of a judge for the bowels of a father, and erect a mercy- 
seat above his tribunal of justice.» The reparation of man had no 
necessary connexion with his creation; it follows not, that because 
Goodness had extracted us from nothing by a mighty power, that it 
must lift us out of wilful misery by a mighty grace. Certainly that 
God who had no need of creating us, had far less need of redeeming 
us: for, since he created one world, he could have as easily de- 
stroyed it, and reared another. It had not been unbecoming the 
Divine Goodness or Wisdom, to have let man perpetually wallow in 
that sink wherein he had plunged himself, since he was criminal,by 
his own will, and, therefore, miserable by his own fault: nothing 
could necessitate this reparation. If Divine Goodness could not be 
obliged by the angelical dignity to repair that nature, he is further 
from any obligation by the meanness of man to repair human nature. 
There was less necessity to restore man than to restore the fallen 
angels. What could man do to oblige God to a reparation of him, 
since he could not render him a recompense for his goodness mani- 
fested in his creation? He must be much more impotent to render 
him a debtor for the redemption of him from misery. Could it bea 
salary for anything we had done? Alas! we are so far from merit- 
ing it, that by our daily demerits, we seem ambitious to puta stop 
to any further effusions of it: we could not have complained of him, 
if he had left us in the misery we had courted, since he was bound 
by no law to bestow upon us the recovery we wanted. When the 
apostle speaks of the gospel of “ redemption,” he giveth it the title 
of the “gospel of the blessed God ” (2 Tim. i. ii). It was the gospel 
of a God abounding in his own blessedness, which received no 
addition by man’s redemption; if he had been blessed by it, it had 
been a goodness to himself, as well as to the creature: it was not an 
indigent goodness needing the receiving anything from us; but i 
was a pure goodness, streaming out of itself, without bringing any- 
thing into itself for the perfection of it: there was no goodness in 

» Rada. Controvers. Part IIL. p. 363. 


2.60 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


us to be the motive of his love, but his goodness was the fountain 
of our benefit. 

ii. It was a distinct goodness of the whole Trinity. In the crea- 
tion of man we find a general consultation (Gen. i. 26), without those 
distinct labors and offices of each person, and without those raised 
expressions and marks of joy and triumph as at man’s restoration. 
In this there are distinct functions; the grace of the Father, the 
merit of the Son, and the efficacy of the Spirit. The Father makes 
the promise of redemption, the Son seals it with his blood, and the 
Spirit applies it. The Father adopts us to be his children, the Son 
redeems us to be his members, and the Spirit renews us to be his 
temples. In this the Father testifies himself well-pleased in a voice; 
the Son proclaims his own delight to do the will of God, and the 
_ Spirit hastens, with the wing of a dove, to fit him for his work, and 
afterwards, in his apparition in the likeness of fiery tongues, mani- 
fests his zeal for the propagation of the redeeming gospel. 

iv. The effects of it proclaim His great goodness. It is by this 
we are delivered from the corruption of our nature, the ruin of our 
happiness, the deformity of our sins, and the punishment of our 
transgressions; he frees us from the ignorance wherewith we were 
darkened and from the slavery wherein we were fettered. When 
he came to make Adam’s process after his crime, instead of pro- 
nouncing the sentence of death he had merited, he utters a promise 
that man could not have expected; his kindness swells above his 
provoked justice, and, while he chaseth him out of paradise, he gives 
him hopes of regaining the same, or a better habitation ; and is, in 
the whole, more ready to prevent him with the blessings of his good- 
ness, than charge him with the horror of his crimes (Gen. 11. 15). 
It is a goodness that pardons us more transgressions than there are 
moments in our lives, and overlooks as many follies as there are 
thoughts in our heart: he doth not only relieve our wants, but re- 
stores us to our dignity. It is a greater testimony of goodness to 
instate a person in the highest honors, than barely to supply his pre- 
sent necessity : it is an admirable pity whereby he was inclined to 
redeem us, and an incomparable affection whereby he was resolved 
to exalt us. What can be desired more of him than his goodness 
hath granted? He hath sought us out when we were lost, and ran- 
somed us when we were captives; he hath pardoned us when we 
were condemned, and raised us when we were dead. In creation he 
reared us from nothing, in redemption he delivers our understanding 
from ignorance and vanity, and our wills from impotence and ob- 
stinacy, and our whole man from a death worse than that nothing he 
drew us from by creation. 

vy. Hence we may consider the height of this goodness in redemp- 
tion to exceed that in creation. He gave man a being in creation, 
but did not draw him from inexpressible misery by that act. His 
liberality in the gospel doth infinitely surpass what we admire in the 
works of nature; his goodness in the latter is more astonishing to 
our belief, than his goodness in creation is visible to our eye. There 
‘3 more of his bounty expressed in that one verse, “ So God loved 
the world, that he gave his only begotten Son” (John ii. 16), than 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 261 


there is in the whole volume of the world: it is an incomprehensible 
so; aso that all the angels in heaven cannot analyse; and few com- 
ment upon, or understand, the dimensions of this so. In creation he 
formed an innocent creature of the dust of the ground; in redemp- 
tion he restores a rebellious creature by the blood of his Son: it is 
greater than that goodness manifested im creation. 

1st. In regard of the difficulty in effecting it. In creation, mere 
nothing was vanquished to bring us into being; in redemption, sul- 
len enmity was conquered for the enjoyment of our restoration ; in 
creation, he subdued a nullity to make us creatures; in redemption, 
his goodness overcomes his omnipotent justice to restore us to feli- 
city. A word from the mouth of Goodness inspired the dust of 
men’s bodies with a living soul; but the blood of his Son must be 
shed, and the laws of natural affection seems to be overturned, to 
lay the foundation of our renewed happiness. In the first, heaven 
did but speak, and the earth was formed; in the second, heaven it- 
self must sink to earth, and be clothed with dusty earth, to reduce 
man’s dust to its original state. 

2d. This goodness is greater than that manifested in creation, in 
regard of its cost. This was a more expensive goodness than what 
was laid out in creation. ‘The redemption of one soul is precious” 
(Ps. xlix. 8), much more costly than the whole fabric of the world, 
er as many worlds as the understandings of angels in their utmost 
extent can conceive to be created. For the effecting of this, God 
parts with his dearest treasure, and his Son eclipses his choicest 
glory. For this, God must be made man, Eternity must suffer death, 
the Lord of angels must weep in a cradle, and the Creator of the 
world must hang like a slave; he must be ina mangerin Bethlehem, 
and die upon a cross on Calvary ; unspotted righteousness must be 
made sin, and unblemished blessedness be made a curse. He was at 
no other expense than the breath of his mouth to form man; the 
fruits of the earth could have maintained innocent man without any 
other cost; but his broken nature cannot be healed without the in- 
valuable medicine of the blood of God. View Christ in the womb 
and in the manger, in his weary steps and hungry bowels, in his 
prostrations in the garden, and in his clodded drops of bloody 
sweat; view his head pierced with a crown of thorns, and his face 
besmeared with the soldiers’ slabber; view him in his march to Cal- 
vary, and his elevation on the painful cross, with his head hanged 
down, and his side streaming blood; view him pelted with the scoffs 

of the governors, and the derisions of the rabble; and see, in all 
this, what cost Goodness was at for man’s redemption! In creation, 
his power made the sun to shine upon us, and, in redemption, his 
bowels sent a Son to die for us. 

dd. This goodness of God in redemption is greater than that man- 
ifested in creation, in regard of man’s desert of the contrary. In 
the creation, as there was nothing without him to allure him to the 
expressions of his bounty, so there was nothing that did damp the 
inclinations of his goodness: the nothing from whence the world 
was drawn, could never merit, nor demerit a being, because it was 
nothing; as there was nothing to engage him, so there was nothing 


262 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


to disoblige him; as his favor could not be merited, so neither could 
his anger be deserved. But in this he finds ingratitude against the 
former marks of his goodness, and rebellion against the sweetness 
of his sovereignty,—crimes unworthy of the dews of goodness, and 
worthy of the sharpest strokes of vengeance; and therefore the 
Scripture advanceth the honor of it above the title of mere good- 
ness, to that of “grace” (Rom. i. 2; Titus 1. 11); because men were 
not only unworthy of a blessing, but worthy of acurse. An innocent 
nothing more deserves creation, than a culpable creature deserves an 
exemption from destruction. When man fell, and gave occasion to 
God to repent of his created work, hisravishing goodness surmount- 
ed the occasions he had of repenting, and the provocations he had 
to the destruction of his frame. 

» 4th. It was a greater goodness than was expressed towards the 
angels. 

iL A greater goodness than was expressed towards the standing 
angels. The Son of God did no more expose his life for the con- 
firmation of those that stood, than for the restoration of those that 
fell; the death of Christ was not for the holy angels, but for simple 
man; they needed the grace of God to confirm them, but not the 
death of Christ to restore or preserve them; they had a beloved ho- 
liness to be established by the powerful grace of God, but not any 
abominable sin to be blotted out by the blood of God; they had no 
debt to pay but that of obedience; but we had both a debt of obe- 
dience to the precepts, and a debt of suffering to the penalty, after 
the fall. Whether the holy angels were confirmed by Christ, or no, 
is a question: some think they were, from Colos. 1. 20, where 
“things in heaven” are said to be “reconciled ;” but some think, 
that place signifies no more than the reconciliation of things in 
heaven, if meant of the angels, to things on earth, with whom they 
were at enmity in the cause of their Sovereign ; or the reconciliation 
of things in heaven to God, is meant the glorified saints, who were 
once in a state of sin, and whom the death of Christ upon the cross 
reached, though dead long before. But if angels were confirmed by 
Christ, it was by him not as a slain sacrifice, but as a sovereign Head 
of the whole creation, appointed by God to gather all things into 
one; which some think to be the intendment of Eph. i. 40, where 
all things, as well those in heaven, as those in earth, are said to be 
“ pathered together in one, in Christ.” Where is a syllable in Serip- 
ture of his being crucified for angels, but only for sinners? Not 
for the confirmation of the one, but the reconciliation of the other; 
so that the goodness whereby God continued those blessed spirits in 
heaven, through the effusions of his grace, is a small thing to the 
restoring us to our forfeited happiness, through the streams of Divine 
blood. ‘The preserving a man in life is a little thing, and a smaller 
benefit than the raising a man from death. The rescuing a man from 
an ignominious punishment, lays a greater obligation than barely to 
prevent him from committing a capital crime. The preserving a 
man standing upon the top of a steep hill, is more easy than to 
bring a crippled and _phthisical man, from the bottom to the top. 
The continuance God gave to the angels, is not so signal a mark of 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 263 


his goodness as the deliverance he gave to us; since they were not 
sunk into sin, nor by any crime fallen into misery. 

2. His goodness in redemption is greater than any goodness ex- 
pressed to the fallen angels. It is the wonder of his goodness to us, 
that he was mindful of fallen man, and careless of fallen angels; that 
he should visit man, wallowing in death and blood, with the day- 
spring from on high, and never turn the Egyptian darkness of devils 
into cheerful day; when they sinned, Divine thunder dashed them 
into hell; when man sinned, Divine blood wafts the fallen creature 
from his misery: the angels wallow in their own blood forever, 
while Christ is made partaker of our blood, and wallows in his 
blood, that we might not forever corrupt in ours; they tumbled 
down from heaven, and Divine goodness would not vouchsafe to 
catch them; man tumbles down, and Divine goodness holds out a 
hand drenched in the blood of Him, that was from the foundations 
of the world, to lift us up (Heb. ii. 16). He spared not those digni- 
fied spirits, when they revolted; and spared not punishing his Son 
for dusty man, when he offended; when he might as well forever 
have let man lie in the chains wherein he had entangled himself, as 
them. We were as fit objects of justice as they, and they as fit ob- 
jects of goodness as we; they were not more wretched by their fall 
than we; and the poverty of our nature rendered us more unable to 
recover ourselves, than the dignity of theirs did them; they were 
his Reuben, his first-born; they were his might, and the beginning 
of his strength; yet those elder sons he neglected, to prefer the 
younger; they were the prime and golden pieces of creanon, not 
laden with gross matter, yet they lie under the ruins of their fall, 
while man, lead in comparison of them, is refined for another world. 
They seemed to be fitter objects of Divine goodness, in regard of the 
eminency of their nature above the human; one angel excelled in 
endowments of mind and spirit, vastness of understanding, greatness 
of power, all the sons of men; they were more capable to praise 
him, more capable to serve him; and because of the acuteness of 
their comprehension, more able to have a due estimate of such a re- 
demption, had it been afforded them; yet that goodness which had 
created them so comely, would not lay itself out in restoring the 
beauty they had defaced. The promise was of bruising the serpent’s 
head for us, not of lifting up the serpent’s head with us; their nature 
was not assumed, nor any command given them to believe or repent; 
not one devil spared, not one apostate spirit recovered, not one of 
those eminent creatures restored; every one of them hath only a 
prospect of misery, without any glimpse of recovery; they were 
ruined under one sin, and we repaired under many. All His re- 
deeming goodness was laid out upon man (Ps. exliv. 3); “ What is 
man that thou takest knowledge of him; and the Son of man, that 
thou makest account of him?” Making account of him above 
angels; as they fell without any tempting them, so God would leave 
them to rise, without any assisting them. I know the schools trouble 
themselves to find out the reasons of this peculiarity of grace to man, 
and not to them; because the whole human nature fell, but only a 
part of the angelical; the one sinned by a seduction, and the other 


% 
264 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


by a sullenness, without any tempter; every angel sinned by his 
own proper will, whereas Adam’s posterity sinned by the will of the 
first man, the common root of all. God would deprive the devil of 
any.glory in the satisfaction of his envious desire to hinder man from 
attainment and possession of that happiness which himself had lost. 
The weakness of man below the angelical nature might excite the 
Divine mercy; and since all the things of the lower world were 
ereated for man, God would not lose the honor of his werks, by 
losing the immediate end for which he framed them. And finally, 
because in the restoration of angels, there would have been only a 
restoration of one nature, that was not comprehensive of the nature 
of inferior things; but after all such conjectures, man must sit down, 
and acknowledge Divine goodness to be the only spring, without 
any other motive. Since Intinite Wisdom could have contrived a 
way for redemption for fallen angels, as well as for fallen man, and 
restored both the one and the other; why might not Christ have as- 
sumed their nature as well as ours, into the unity of the Divine per- 
son, and suffered the wrath of God in their nature for them, as well 
as in his human soul for us? It is as conceivable that two natures 
might have been assumed by the Son of God, as well as three souls 
be in man distinct, as some think there are. 

8. To enhance this goodness yet higher ; it was a greater goodness 
to us, than was for a time manifested to Christ himself. ‘To demon- 
strate his goodness to man, in preventing his eternal ruin, he would 
for a while withhold his goodness from his Son, by exposing his life 
as the price of our ransom ; not only subjecting him to the derisions 
of enemies, desertions of friends, and malice of devils, but to the in- 
expressible bitterness of his own wrath in his soul, as made an offer- 
ing for sin. The particle so (John wii. 16), seems to intimate this 
supremacy of goodness; He ‘‘so loved the world, that he gave his 
only begotten Son.” He so loved the world, that he seemed for a 
time not to love his Son in comparison of it, or equal with it. The 
person to whom a gift is given is, in that regard, accounted more 
valuable than the gift or present made to him: thus God valued our 
redemption above the worldly happiness of the Redeemer, and sen- 
tenceth him to an humiliation on earth, in order to our exaltation in 
heaven; he was desirous to hear him groaning, and see him bleed- 
ing, that we might not groan under his frowns, and bleed under his 
wrath; he spared not him, that he might spare us; refused not to 
strike him, that he might be well pleased with us; drenched his 
sword in the blood of his Son, that it might not forever be wet with 
ours, but that his goodness might forever triumph in our salvation ; 
he was willing to have his Son made man, and die, rather than man 
should perish, who had delighted to ruin himself; he seemed to de- 
gerade him for a time from what he was.c But since he could not be 
united to any but to an intellectual creature, he could not be united 
to any viler and more sordid creature than the earthly nature of 
man: and when this Son, in our nature, prayed that the cup might 
pass from him, Goodness would not suffer it, to show how it valued 


-¢ Lingend de Eucharist, pp. 84, 85. 


e 
ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 265 


the manifestation of itself, in the salvation of man, above the preser- 

vation of the life of so dear a person. 

In particular, wherein this goodness appears :— 

ist. The first resolution to redeem, and the means appointed for 
redemption, could have no other inducement but Divine goodness. 
We cannot too highly value the merit of Christ; but we must not 
so much extend the merit of Christ, as to draw a value to eclipse the 
goodness of God; though we owe our redemption and the fruits of 
it to the death of Christ, yet we owe not the first resolutions of re- 
demption, and assumption of our nature, the means of redemption, 
to the merit of Christ. Divine goodness only, without the associa- 
tion of any merit, not only of man, but of the Redeemer himself, be- 
gat the first purpose of our recovery; he was singled out, and pre- 
destinated to be our Redeemer, before he took our nature to merit 
our redemption. ‘God sent his Son,” is a frequent expression in 
the Gospel of St. John (John iii. 84; v. 24; xvu. 3). To what end 
did God send Christ, but to redeem? The purpose of redemption, 
therefore, preceded the pitching upon Christ as the means and pro- 
curing cause of it, 7. e. of our actual redemption, but not of the re- 
deeming purpose; the end is always in intention before the means.4 
“God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son ;” the 
love of God to the world was first in intention, and the order of 
nature, before the will of giving his Son to the world. His intention 
of saving was before the mission of a Saviour; so that this affection 
rose, not from the merit of Christ, but the merit of Christ was direct- 
ed by this affection. It was the effect of it, not the cause. Nor was 
the union of our nature with his merited by him; all his meritorious 
acts were performed in our nature; the nature, therefore, wherein he 
performed it, was not merited; that grace which was not, could not 
merit what it was; he could not merit that humanity, which must 
be assumed before he could merit anything for us, because all merit 
for us must be offered in the nature which had offended. It is true 
“Christ gave himself,” but by the order of Divine goodness; he that 
begat him, pitched upon him, and called him to this great work (Heb. 
v. 5); he is therefore called “‘the Lamb of God,” as being set apart 
by God to be a propitiating and appeasing sacrifice. He is the 
‘Wisdom of God,” since from the Father he reveals the counsel and 
order of redemption. In this regard he calls God ‘“‘ his God” in the 
prophet (Isa. xlix. 4), and in the evangelist (John xx. 17); though 
he was big with affection for the accomplishment, yet he came not 
to do his “‘own will,” but the will of Divine goodness; his own will 
it was, too, but not principally, as being the first wheel in motion, 
but subordinate to the eternal will of Divine bounty. It was by the 
will of God that he came, and by his will he drank the dreggy cup 
of bitterness. Divine justice laid ‘upon him the iniquity of us all,” 
but Divine goodness intended it for our rescue; Divine goodness 
singled him out, and set him apart; Divine goodness invited him to 
it; Divine goodness commanded him to effect it, and put a law into 
his heart, to bias him in the performing of it; Divine goodness sent 
him, and Divine goodness moved justice to bruise him ; and, after — 
4 Lessius. 


* 
266 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


his sacrifice, Divine goodness accepted him, and caressed him for it. 
So earnest was it for our redemption, as to give out special and irre- 
versible orders: death was commanded to be endured by him for us, 
and life commanded to be imparted by him to us (John x. 16, 18). 
If God had not been the mover, but had received the proposal from 
another, he might have heard it, but was not bound to grant it; his 
sovereign authority, was not under any obligation to receive another’s 
sponsion for the miserable criminal. As Christ is the head of man, 
so “God is the head of Christ” (1 Cor. xi. 3); he did nothing but by 
his directions, as he was not a Mediator, but by the constitution of 
Divine goodness. Asa “liberal man deviseth liberal things” (Isa. 
ii. 8), so did a bountiful God devise a bountiful act, wherein his kind- 
ness and love as a Saviour appeared: he was possessed with the re- 
solutions to manifest his goodness in Christ, “in the beginning of 
his way” (Prov. viii. 22, 23), before he descended to the act of crea- 
tion. ‘This intention of goodness preceded his making that creature 
man, who, he foresaw, would fall, and, by his fall, disjoint and en- 
tangle the whole frame of the world, without such a provision. 

9d. In God’s giving Christ to be our Redeemer, he gave the highest 
gift that it was possible for Divine goodness to bestow. As there 
is not a greater God than himself to be conceived, so there 1s not a 
greater gift for this great God to present to his creatures: never did 
God go farther, in any of his excellent perfections, than this. It is 
such a dole that cannot be transcended with a choicer ; he is, as it 
were, come to the last mite of his treasure; and though he could 
ereate millions of worlds for us, he cannot give a greater Son to us. 
He could abound in the expressions of his power, in.new creations 
of worlds, which have not yet been seen, and in the lustre of his 
wisdom in more stately structures; but if he should frame as many 
worlds as there are mites of dust and matter in this, and make every 
one of them as bright and glorious as the sun, though his power and 
wisdom would be more signalized, yet his goodness could not, since 
he hath not a choicer gift to bless those brighter worlds withal, than he 
hath conferred upon this: nor can immense goodness contrive a 
richer means to conduct those worlds to happiness, than he hath both 
invented for this world, and presented it with. It cannot be imag- 
ined, that it can extend itself farther than to give a gift equal with 
himself; a gift as dear to him as himself. His wisdom, had it stud- 
ied millions of eternities (excuse the expression, since eternity ad- 
mits of no millions, it being an interminable duration), it could have 
found out no more to give; this goodness could have bestowed 
no more, and our necessity could not have required a greater of- 
fering for our relief. When God intended, in redemption, the 
manifestation of his highest goodness, it could not be without the 
donation of the choicest gift; as, when he would insure our comfort, 
he swears “by himself,” because he cannot swear “by a greater” 
(Heb. vi. 18): so, when we would insure our happiness, he gives us 
his Son, because he cannot give a greater, being equal with himself. 
Had the Father given himself in person, he had given one first im 
order, but not greater in essence and glorious perfections : it could 
have been no more than the life of God, and should then have been 


a 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 267 


laid down for us; and so it was now, since the human nature did not 
subsist but in his Divine person. 

1. It is a greater gift than worlds, or all things purchased by him. 
What was this gift but “the image of his person, and the brightness 
of his glory” (Heb. i. 3)? What was this gift but one as rich as 
eternal blessedness could make him? What was this gift, but one 
that possessed the fulness of earth, and the more immense riches of 
heaven? It is a more valuable present, than if he presented us with 
thousands of worlds of angels and inferior creatures, because his 
person is incomparably greater, not only than all conceivable, but 
inconceivable, creations; we are more obliged to him for it, than if 
he had made us angels of the highest rank in heaven, because it is a 
gift of more value than the whole angelical nature, because he is an 
infinite person, and therefore infinitely transcends whatsoever is 
finite, though of the highest dignity. ‘lhe wounds of an Almighty 
God for us are a greater testimony of goodness, than if we had all 
the other riches of heaven and earth. This perfection had not ap- 
peared in such an astonishing grandeur, had it pardoned us without 
so rich a satisfaction ; that had been pardon to our sin, not a God of 
our nature. “God so loved the world” that he pardoned it, had not 
sounded so great and so good, as God so loved the world, that he 
“gave his only-begotten Son.” Est aliquid in Christo formosius Ser- 
vatore. ‘There is something in Christ more excellent and comely than 
the office of a Saviour; the greatness of his person is more excellent, 
than the salvation procured by his death: it was a greater gift than 
was bestowed upon innocent Adam, or the holy angels. In the cre- 
ation, his goodness gave us creatures for our use: in our redemp- 
tion, his goodness gives us what was dearest to him for our service, 
our Sovereign in office to benefit us, as well as in a royalty to gov- 
ern us. 

2. It was a greater gift, because it was his own Son, not an angel. 
It had been a mighty goodness to have given one of the lofty sera- 
phims; a greater goodness to have given the whole corporation of 
those glorious spirits for us, those children of the Most High: but 
he gave that Son, whom he commands “all the angels to worship” 
(Heb. i. 6), and all men to adore, and pay the “lowest homage to” 
(Ps. 11. 12); that Son that is to be honored by us, as we “honor the 
Vather” (John v. 23); that Son which was his “delight” (Prov. viii. 
80); his delights in the Hebrew, wherein all the delights of the 
Father were gathered in one, as well as of the whole creation ; and 
not simply a Son, but an only-begotten Son, upon which Christ lays 
the stress with an emphasis (1 John iii. 16). He had but one Son in 
heaven or earth, one Son from an unviewable eternity, and that one 
Son he gave for a degenerate world; this son he consecrated for “ ev- 
ermore a Priest” (Heb. vii. 28). “The word of the oath makes the 
Son ;” the peculiarity of his Sonship heightens the goodness of the 
Donor. It was no meaner a person that he gave to empty himself 
of his glory, to fulfil an obedience for us, that we might be rendered 
happy partakers of the Divine nature. Those that know the natural 
affection of a father to a son, must judge the affection of God the 
Father to the Son infinitely greater, than the affection of an earthly 


268 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


father to the son of his bowels. It must be an unparalleled goodness, 
to give up a Son that he loved with so ardent an affection, for the 
redemption of rebels: abandon a glorious Son to a dishonorable 
death, for the security of those that had violated the laws of right- 
eousness, and endeavored to pull the sovereign crown from his head. 
Besides, being an only Son, all those affections centered in him, which 
in parents would have been divided among a multitude of children: 
so, then, as it was a testimony of the highest faith and obedience in. 
“ Abraham to offer up his only-begotten son to God” (Heb. ae Ways 
so it was the triumph of Divine goodness, to give so great, so dear 
a person, for so little a thing as man; and for such a piece of nothing 
and vanity, as a sinful world. 

3. And this Son given to rescue us by his death. It wasa gift to 
us; for our sakes he descended from his throne, and dwelt on earth ; 
for our sakes he was “made flesh,” and infirm flesh; for our sakes 
he was “ made a curse,” and scorched in the furnace of his Father’s 
wrath; for our sakes he went naked, armed only with his own 
strength, into the lists of that combat with the devils, that led us 
captive. Had he given him to be a leader for the conquest of some 
earthly enemies, it had been a great goodness to display his banners, 
and bring us under his conduct; but he sent him to lay down his 
life in the bitterest and most inglorious manner, and exposed him to 
a cursed death for our redemption from that dreadful curse, which 
would have broken us to pieces, and irreparably have crushed us. 
He gave him to us, to suffer for us as a man, and redeem us as a 
God; to be a sacrifice to expiate our sin_ by translating the punish- 
ment upon himself, which was merited by us. Thus was he made 
low to exalt us, and debased to advance us, “made poor to enrich 
us” (2 Cor. viii. 9); and eclipsed to brighten our sullied natures, and 
wounded, that he might be a physician for our languishments. He 
was ordered to taste the bitter cup of death, that we might drink of 
the rivers of immortal life and pleasures: to submit to the frailties 
of the human nature, that we might possess the glories of the divine: 
he was ordered to be a sufferer, that we might be no longer captives ; 
and to pass through the fire of Divine wrath, that he might purge 
our nature from the dross it had contracted. Thus was the righteous 
given for sin, the innocent for criminals, the glory of heaven for the 
dregs of earth, and the immense riches of a Deity expended to re- 
stock man. it 

4, And a Son that was exalted for what he had done for us by the 
order of Divine goodness. The exaltation of Christ was no less a 
signal mark of his miraculous goodness to us, than of his affection to 
him: since he was obedient by Divine goodness to die for us, his ad- 
vancement was for his obedience to those orders. The name given 
to him “above every name” (Phil. i. 8, 9), was a repeated triumph 
of this perfection; since his passion was not for himself, he was 
wholly innocent, but for us who were criminal. His advancement 
was not only for himself as Redeemer, but for us as redeemed: 
Divine goodness centered in him, both in his cross and in his crown; 
for it was for the “purging our sins, he sat down on the right hand 
of the Majesty on’ high” (Heb. 1. 8): and the whole blessed society 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 269 


of principalities and powers in heaven admire this goodness of God, 
and ascribe to him “honor, glory, and power” for advancing the 
“Tamb slain” (Rev. v. 11-18). Divine goodness did not only give 
him to us, but gave him power, riches, strength, and honor, for man- 
ifesting this goodness to us, and opening the passages for its fuller 
conveyances to the sons of men. Had not God had thoughts of a 
perpetual goodness, he would not have settled him so near him, to 
manage our cause, and testified so much affection to him on our be- 
half. This goodness gave him to be debased for us, and ordered 
him to be enthroned for us: as it gave him to us bleeding, so it 
would give him to us triumphing; that as we have a share by grace 
in the merits of his humiliation, we might partake also of the glories 
of his coronation; that, from first to last, we may behold nothing but 
the triumphs of Divine goodness to fallen man. 

5. In bestowing this gift on us, Divine goodness gives whole God 
to us. Whatsoever is great and excellent in the Godhead, the Father 
gives us, by giving us his Son: the Creator gives himself to us in his 
Son Christ. In giving creatures to us, he gives the riches of earth; 
in giving himself to us, he gives the riches of heaven, which sur- 
mount all understanding: it is in this gift he becomes our God, and 
passeth over the title of all that he is for our use and benefit, that 
every attribute in the Divine nature may be claimed by us; not to 
be imparted to us whereby we may be deified, but employed for our 
welfare, whereby we may be blessed. He gave himself in creation to 
us in the image of his holiness; but, in redemption, he gave himself 
in the image of his person: he would not only communicate the 
goodness without him, but bestow upon us the infinite goodness of 
his own nature; that that which was his own end and happiness 
might be our end and happiness, viz. himself. By giving his Son, 
he hath given himself; and in both gifts he hath given all things to 
us. The Creator of all things is eminently all things: “ He hath 
given all things into the hands of his Son” (John in. 385); and, by 
consequence, given all things into the hands of his redeemed crea- 
tures, by giving them Him to whom he gave all things; whatsoever 
we were invested in by creation, whatsoever we were deprived of by 
corruption, and more, he hath deposited in safe hands for our enjoy- 
ment: and what can Divine goodness do more for us? What further 
on it give unto us, than what it hath given, and in that gift designed 

or us? 

3d. This goodness is enhanced by considering the state of man in 
the first transgression, and since. 

1. Man’s first transgression. If we should rip up every vein of 
that first sin, should we find any want of wickedness to excite a Just 
indignation? What was there but ingratitude to Divine bounty, 
and rebellion against Divine sovereignty? The royalty of God was 
attempted; the supremacy of Divine knowledge above man’s own 
knowledge envied; the riches of goodness, whereby he lived and 
breathed, slighted. There is a discontent with God upon an un- 
reasonable sentiment, that God had denied a knowledge to him 
which was his right and due, when there should have been an hum- 
ble acknowledgment of that unmerited goodness, which had. not only 


270 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


given him a being above other creatures, but placed him the gover- 
nor and lord of those that were inferior to him. What alienation 
of his understanding was there from knowing God, and of his will 
from loving him! A debauch of all his faculties; a spiritual adultery, 
in preferring, not only one of God’s creatures, but one of his des- 
perate enemies, before him; thinking him a wiser counsellor than 
Infinite Wisdom, and imagining him possessed with kinder affections 
to him than that God who had newly created him. Thus he joins 
in league with hell against heaven, with a fallen spirit against his 
bountiful Benefactor, and enters into society with rebels that just 
before commenced a war against his and their common Sovereign: 
he did not only falter in, but cast off, the obedience due to his Crea- 
tor; endeavored to purloin his glory, and actually murdered all those 
that were virtually in his loins. ‘Sin entered into the world” by 
him, “and death by sin, and passed upon all men” (Rom. v. 12), 
taking them off from their subjection to God, to be slaves to the 
damned spirits, and heirs of their misery: and, after all this, he adds 
a foul imputation on God, taxing him as the author of his sin, and 
thereby stains the beauty of his holiness. But, notwithstanding all 
this, God stops not up the flood-gates of his goodness, nor doth he 
entertain fiery resolutions against man, but brings forth a healing 
promise; and sends not an angel upon commission to reveal it to 
him, but preaches it himself to this forlorn and rebellious creature 
(Gen. ui. 15). 

2. Could there be anything in this fallen creature to allure God to 
the expression of his goodness? Was there any good action in all 
his carriage that could plead for a re-admission of him to his former 
state? Was there one good quality left, that could be an orator to 
persuade Divine goodness to such a gracious procedure? Was there 
any moral goodness in man, after this debauch, that might be an 
object of Divine love? What was there in him, that was not rather 
a provocation than an allurement? Could you expect that any per- 
fection in God should find a motive in this ungrateful apostate to 
open a mouth for him, and be an advocate to support him, and bring 
him off from a just tribunal? or, after Divine goodness had begun to 
pity and plead for man, is it not wonderful that it should not discon- 
tinue the plea, after it found man’s excuse to be as black as his crime 
(Gen. i. 12), and his carriage, upon his examination, to be as dis- 
obliging as his first revolt? It might well be expected, that all the 
perfections in the Divine nature would have entered into an associa- 
tion eternally to treat this rebel according to his deserts. What at- 
tractives were there in a silly worm, much less in such complete 
wickedness, inexcusable enmity, infamous rebellion, to design a Re- 
deemer for him, and such a person as the Son of God to a fleshy 
body, an eclipse of glory, and an ignominious cross? ‘ihe meanness 
of man was further from alluring God to it, than the dignity of 
angels. 

5. Was there not a world of demerit in man, to animate grace as 
well as wrath against him? We were so far from deserving the 
opening any streams of goodness, that we had merited floods of de- 
vouring wrath. What were all men but enemies to God in a high 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 271 


manner? Every offence was infinite, as beimg committed against 
a being of infinite dignity; it was a stroke at the very being of God, 
a resistance of all his attributes; it would degrade him from the 
height and perfection of his nature; it would not, by its good will, 
sufter God to be God. If he that hates his brother is a murderer of 
his brother (1 John iii. 15), he that hates his Creator is a murderer 
of the Deity, and every ‘carnal mind is enmity to God” (Rom. vin, 
7): every sin envies him his authority, by breaking his precept; and 
envies him his goodness, by defacing the marks of it: every sin com- 

rehends in it more than men or angels can conceive: that God who 
only hath the clear apprehensions of his own dignity, hath the sole 
clear apprehensions of sin’s malignity. All men were thus by na- 
ture: those that sinned before the coming of the Redeemer had been 
in a state of sin; those that were to come after him would be in a 
state of sin by their birth, and be criminals as soon as ever they were 
creatures. All men, as well the glorified, as those in the flesh at the 
coming of the Redeemer, and those that were to be born after, were 
considered in a state of sin by God, when he bruised the Redeemer 
for them; all were filthy and unworthy of the eye of God; all had 
employed the faculties of their souls, and the members of their bodies, 
which they enjoyed by his goodness, against the interest of his glory. 
Every rational creature had made himself a slave to those creatures 
over whom he had been appointed a lord, subjected himself as a 
servant to his inferior, and strutted as a superior against his liberal 
Sovereign, and by every sin rendered himself more a child of Satan, 
and enemy of God, and more worthy of the curses of the law, and the 
torments of hell. Was it not, now, a mighty goodness that would 
surmount those high mountains of demerit, and elevate such creatures 
by the depression of his Son? Had we been possessed of the highest 
holiness, a reward had been the natural effect of goodness. It was 
not possible that God should be unkind to a righteous and innocent 
creature; his grace would have crowned that which had been so 
agreeable to him. He had been a denier of himself, had he num- 
bered innocent creatures in the rank of the miserable; but to be kind 
to an enemy, to run counter to the vastness of demerit in man, was 
a superlative goodness, a goodness triumphing above all the provo- 
cations of men, and pleas of justice: it was an abounding goodness 
of grace; “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 
vy. 20), snegencgiaaevaey; it swelled above the heights of sin, and tni- 
umphed more than all his other attributes. 

4. Man was reduced to the lowest condition. Our crimes had 
brought us to the lowest calamity ; we were brought to the dust, and 
prepared for hell. Adam had not the boldness to request, and there- 
fore we may judge he had not the least hopes of pardon; he was 
sunk under wrath, and could have expected no better an entertain- 
ment than the tempter, whose solicitations he submitted to, We had 
cast the diadem from our heads, and lost all our original excellency ; 
we were lost to our own happiness, and lost to our Creator’s service, 
when he was so kind as to send his Son to seek us (Matt. xvii. 11), 
and so liberal as to expend his blood for our cure and preservation 
How great was that goodness that would not abandon us in our mis 


272 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


ery, but remit our crimes, and rescue our persons, and ransom our 
souls by so great a price from the rights of justice, and horrors of 
hell, we were so fitted for? 

5. Every age multiplied provocations; every age of the world 
proved more degenerate. he traditions, which were purer and 
more lively among Adam’s immediate posterity, were more dark 
among his further descendants; idolatry, whereof we have no marks 
in the old world before the deluge, was frequent afterwards in every 
nation: not only the knowledge of the true God was lost, but the 
natural reverential thoughts of a Deity were expelled. Hence gods 
were dubbed according to men’s humors; and not only human pas- 
sions, but brutish vices, ascribed to them: as by the fall we were 
become less than men, so we would fancy God no better than a 
beast, since beasts were worshipped as gods (Rom. i. 21); yea, fan- 
cied God no better than a devil, since that destroyer was worshipped 
‘Instead of the Creator, and a homage paid to the powers of hell that 
had ruined them, which was due to the goodness of that Benefactor, 
who had made them and preserved them in the world. The vilest 
creatures were deified; reason was debased below common sense; 
and men adored one end of a “log,” while they “warmed them- 
selves with the other” (Isa. xliv. 14, 16, 17); as if that which was 
ordained for the kitchen were a fit representation for God in the tem- 
ple. Thus were the natural notions of a Deity depraved; the whole 
_ world drenched in idolatry; and though the Jews were free from 
that gross abuse of God, yet they were sunk also into loathsome su- 
perstitions, when the goodness of God brought in his designed Re- 
deemer and redemption into the world. 

6. ‘The impotence of man enhanceth this goodness. Our own eye 
did scarce pity us, and it was impossible for our own hands to re- 
eve us; we were insensible of our misery, in love with our death; 
we courted our chains, and the noise of our fettering lusts were our 
music, “serving divers lusts and pleasures” (Tit. ii. 3). Our lusts 
were our pleasures; Satan’s yoke was as delightful to us to bear, as 
to him to impose: instead of being his opposers in his attempts 
against us, we were his voluntary seconds, and every whit as wil- 
ling to embrace, as he was to propose, his ruining temptations. As 
no man can recover himself from death, so no man can recover him- 
self from wrath; he is as unable to redeem, as to create himself; he 
might as soon have stripped himself of his being, as put an end to 
his misery ; his captivity would have been endless, and his chains 
remediless, for anything he could do to knock them off, and deliver 
himself; he was too much in love with the sink of sin, to leave 
wallowing in it, and under too powerful a hand, to cease frying in 
the flames of wrath. As the law could not be obeyed by man, aiter 
a corrupt principle had entered into him, so neither could justice be 
satisfied by him after his transgression. The sinner was indebted, 
but bankrupt; as he was unable to pay a mite of that obedience he 
owed to the precept, because of his enmity, so he was unable to sat- 
isfy what he owed to the penalty, because of his feebleness: he was 
as much without love to observe the one, as “ without strength” to 
bear the other: he could not, because of his “ enmity, be subject to 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 278 


the law” (Rom. viii. 7), or compensate for his sin, because he was 
“ without strength” (Rom. v. 6). His strength to offend was great; 
but to deliver himself a mere nothing. Repentance was not a thing 
known by man after the fall, till he had hopes of redemption; and 
if he had known and exercised it, what compensation are the tears 
of a malefactor for an injury done to the crown, and attempting the 
life of his prince? How great was Divine goodness, not only to 
pity men in this state, but to provide a strong Redeemer for them ! 
“Q Lord, my strength, and my Redeemer!” said the Psalmist (Ps. 
xix. 14): when he found out a Redeemer for our misery, he found 
out a strength for our impotency. To conclude this: behold the 
“goodness of God,” when we had thus unhandsomely dealt with 
him; had nothing to allure his goodness, multitudes of provocations 
to incense him, were reduced to a condition as low as could be, fit 
to be the matter of his scoffs, and the sport of Divine justice, and so 
weak that we could not repair our own ruims; then did he open a 
fountain of fresh goodness in the death of his Son, and sent forth 
such delightful streams, as in our original creation we could never 
have tasted ; not only overcame the resentments of a provoked jus- 
tice, but magnified itself by our lowness, and strengthened itself by 
our weakness. His goodness had before created an innocent, but 
here it saves a malefactor ; and sends his Son to die for us, as if the 
Holy of holes were the criminal, and the rebel the innocent. It had 
been a pompous goodness to have given him as a king; but a good- 
ness of greater grandeur to expose him as a sacrifice for slaves and 
enemies. Had Adam remained innocent, and proved thankful for 
what he had received, it had been great goodness to have brought 
him to glory; but to bring filthy and rebellious Adam to it, sur- 
mounts, by inexpressible degrees, that sort of goodness he had ex- 
perimented before; since it was not from a light evil, a tolerable 
curse unawares brought upon us, but from the yoke we had willing- 
ly submitted to, from the power of darkness we had courted, and the 
furnace of wrath we had kindled for ourselves. What are we dead 
dogs, that he should behold us with so gracious an eye? This good- 
ness is thus enhanced, if you consider the state of man in his first 
transgression, and after. 

4th. T’his goodness further appears in the high advancement of our 
nature, after it had so highly offended. By creation, we had an 
affinity with animals in our bodies, with angels in our spirits, with 
God in his image; but not with God in our nature, till the incarna- 
tion of the Redeemer. Adam, by creation, was the son of God 
(Luke iui. 38), but his nature was not one with the person of God: 
he was his son, as created by him, but had no affinity to him by vir- 
tue of union with him: but now man doth not only see his nature in 
multitudes of men on earth, but, by an astonishing goodness, be- 
holds his nature united to the Deity in heaven: that as he was the 
son of God by creation, he is now the brother of God by redemp- 
tion; for with such a title doth that Person, who was the Son of God 
as well as the Son of man, honor his disciples (John xx. 17): and 
because he is of the same nature with them, he “is not ashamed to 


call them brethren” (Heb. ii. 11). Our nature, which was infinitely 
VOL. IL—18 


274 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


distant from, and below the Deity, now makes one person with the 
Son of God. What man sinfully aspired to, God hath graciously 
eranted, and more: man aspired to a likeness in knowledge, and God 
hath granted him an affinity in union. It had been astonishing good- 
ness to angelize our natures; but in redemption Divine goodness 
hath acted higher, in a sort to deify our natures. In creation, our 
nature was exalted above other creatures on earth; in our redemp- 
tion, our nature is exalted above all the host of heaven: we were 
higher than the beasts, as creatures, but “lower than the angels” 
(Ps. viii. 5); but, by the incarnation of the Son of God, our na- 
ture is elevated many steps above them. After it had sunk itself 
by corruption below the bestial nature, and as low as the dia- 
bolical, the “fulness of the Godhead dwells in our nature bodily” 
(Col. ii. 9), but never in the angels, angelically. The Son of God 
descended to dignify our nature, by assuming it; and ascended 
with our nature to have it crowned above those standing monu- 
ments of Divine power and goodness (ph. 1. 20, 21). That Per- 
gon that descended in our nature into the grave, and in the same 
nature was raised up again, is, in that same nature, set at the 
right hand of God in heaven, “far above all principality, and 
power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named.” 
Our refined clay, by an indissoluble union with this Divine Per- 
son, is honored to sit forever upon a throne above all the tribes 
of seraphims and cherubims; and the Person that wears it, is the 
head of the good angels, and the conqueror of the bad; the one 
are put under his feet, and the other commanded to adore him, 
“that purged our sins in our nature” (Heb. i. 3, 6): that Divine 
Person in our nature receives adoration from the angels; but the 
nature of man is not ordered to pay any homage and adorations 
to the angels. How could Divine goodness, to man, more mag- 
nify itself? As we could not have a lower descent than we had 
by sin, how could we have a higher ascent than by a substan- 
tial participation of a divine life, in our nature, in the unity of a 
Divine Person? Our earthly nature is joined to a heavenly Person; 
our undone nature united to “one equal with God” (Phil. 1. 6). It 
may truly be said, that man is God, which is infinitely more glori- 
ous for us, than if it could be said, man is an angel. If it were 
goodness to advance our innocent nature above other creatures, the 
advancement of our degenerate nature above angels deserves a 
higher title than mere goodness. It is a more gracious act, than if 
all men had been transformed into the pure spiritual nature of the 
loftiest cherubims. 

5th. This goodness is manifest in the covenant of grace made 
with us, whereby we are freed from the rigor of that of works. 
God might have insisted upon the terms of the old covenant, and 
required of man the improvement of his original stock; but God 
hath condescended to lower terms, and offered man more gracious 
methods, and mitigated the rigor of the first, by the sweetness of 
the second. 

1. It is goodness, that he should condescend to make another 
covenant with man. ‘To stipulate with innocent and righteous 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 276 


Adam for his obedience, was a stoop of his sovereignty; though 
he gave the precept as a sovereign Lord, yet in his covenanting, he 
seems to descend to some kind of equality with that dust and ashes 
with whom the treated. Absolute sovereigns do not usually cove- 
nant with their people, but exact obedience and duty, without 
binding themselves to bestow a reward; and if they intend any, 
they reserve the purpose in their own breasts, without treating their 
subjects with a solemn declaration of it. There was no obligation 
on God to enter into the first covenant, much less, after the viola- 
tion of the first, to the settlement of a new. If God seemed in 
some sort to equal himself to man in the first, he seemed to descend 
below himself in treating with a rebel upon more condescending 
terms in the second. If his covenant with innocent Adam was a 
stoop of his sovereignty, this with rebellious Adam seems to be a 
stripping himself of his majesty in favor of his goodness; as if his 
happiness depended upon us, and not ours upon him. It is a humilia- 
tion of himself to behold the things in heaven, the glorious angels, as 
well as things on earth, mortal men (Ps. exii. 6); much more to 
bind himself in gracious bonds to the glorious angels; and much 
more if to rebel man. In the first covenant there was much of 
sovereignty as well as goodness; in the second there is less of sover- 
eignty, and more of grace: in the first there was a righteous man 
for a holy God; in the second a polluted creature for a pure and 
provoked God: in the first he holds his sceptre in his hand, to rule 
his subjects; in the second he seems to lay by his sceptre, to cour: 
and espouse a beggar (Hosea ii. 18—20): in the first he is a Lord ; 
in the second a husband; and binds himself upon gracious condi- 
tions to become a debtor. How should this goodness fill us with an 
humble astonishment, as it did Abraham, when he “fell on his 
face,” when he heard God speaking of making a covenant with 
him ! (Gen. xvii. 2, 8). And if God speaking to Israel out of the 
fire, and making them to hear his voice out of heaven, that he 
might instruct them, was a consideration whereby Moses would 
heighten their admiration of Divine goodness, and engage their 
affectionate obedience to him (Deut. iv. 82, 36, 40), how much more 
admirable is it for God to speak so kindly to us through the pacify- 
ing blood of the covenant, that silenced the terrors of the old, and 
settled the tenderness of the new ! 

2. His goodness is seen in the nature and tenor of the new cove- 
nant. There are in this richer streams of love and pity. The lan- 
guage of one was, Die, if thou sin; that of the other, Live, if 
thou believest :¢ the old covenant was founded upon the obedience 
of man; the new one is not founded upon the inconstancy of man’s 
will, but the firmness of Divine love, and the valuable merit of 
Christ. The head of the first covenant was human and mutable; 
the Head of the second is divine and immutable. The curse due 
to us by the breach of the first, is taken off by the indulgence oi 
the second: we are by it snatched from the jaws of the law, to be 
wrapped up in the bosom of grace (Rom. vii. 1). “For you are 
not under the law; but under grace” (Rom. vi. 14); from the curse 

e Turreti, Ser. p. 33. 


3276 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


and condemnation of the law, to the sweetness and forgiveness of 
grace. Christ bore the one, being “made a curse for us” (Gal. 1. 
18), that we might enjoy the sweetness of the other; by this we are 
brought from Mount Sinai, the mount of terror, to Mount Sion, 
the mount of sacrifice, the type of the great Sacrifice (Heb. xu. 18, 
22). That covenant brought in death upon one offence, this cove- 
nant offers life after many offences (Rom. v. 16, 17): that mvolves 
us in a curse, and this enricheth us with a blessing; the breaches 
of that expelled us out of Paradise, and the embracing of this ad- 
mits us into heaven. This covenant demands, and admits of that 
repentance whereof there was no mention in the first; that de- 
manded obedience, not repentance upon a failure; and though the 
exercise of it had been never so deep in the fallen creature, nothing 
of the law’s severity had been remitted by any virtue of it. Again, 
the first covenant demanded exact righteousness, but conveyed no 
cleansing virtue, upon the contracting any filth. The first demands 
a continuance in the righteousness conferred in creation ; the sec- 
ond imprints a gracious heart in regeneration. “ I will pour clean 
water upon you; I will puta new spirit within you,” was the voice 
of the second covenant, not of the first. Again, as to pardon: 
Adam’s covenant was to punish him, not to pardon him, if he fell; 
that threatened death upon transgression, this remits it; that was 
an act of Divine sovereignty, declaring the will of God; this is an 
act of Divine grace, passing an act of oblivion on the crimes of the 
creature: that, as it demanded no repentance upon a failure, so it 
promised no mercy upon guilt; that convened our sin, and con- 
demned us for it; this clears our guilt, and comforts us under it. 
The first covenant related us to God as a Judge; every transgres- 
sion against it forfeited his indulgence as a Father: the second 
delivers us from God as a condemning Judge, to bring us under 
his wing, as an affectionate Father; in the one there was a dreadful 
frown to scare us; in the other, a healing wing to cover and re- 
lieve us. Again, in regard of righteousness: that demanded. our 
performance of a righteousness in and by ourselves, and our own 
strength; this demands our acceptance of a righteousness higher 
than ever the standing angels had; the righteousness of. the first 
covenant was the righteousness of a man, the righteousness of the 
second is the righteousness of a God (2 Cor. v. 21). Again, in re- 
gard of that obedience it demands: it exacts not of us, as @ ne- 
cessary condition, the perfection of obedience, but the sincerity of 
obedience; an uprightness in our intention, not an unspottedness in 
our action; an integrity in our aims, and an industry in our com- 
pliance with divine precepts: ‘‘ Walk before me, and be thou 
perfect” (Gen. xvii. 1); 2 ¢. smcere. What is hearty in our actions, 
is accepted; and what is defective, is overlooked, and not charged 
upon us, because of the obedience and righteousness of our Surety. 
The first covenant rejected all our services after sin; the services of 
a person under the sentence of death, are but dead services: this ac- 
cepts our imperfect services, after faith in it; that administered no 
strength to obey, but supposed it; this supposeth our inability to 
obey, and confers some strength for it: “I will put my spirit 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 277 


within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes” (Hzek. xxxvi. 
27). Again, in regard of the promises: the old covenant had good, 
but the new hath “better promises” (Heb. vii. 6), of justification 
after guilt and sanctification after filth, and glorification at last of 
the whole man. In the first, there was provision against guilt, but 
none for the removal of it: provision against filth, but none for 
the cleansing of it; promise of happiness implied, but not so great 
a one as that “life and immortality” in heaven, “brought to light 
by the gospel” (2 Tim. 1.10). Why said to be “brought to hght 
by the gospel?” because it was not only buried, upon the fall of man 
under the curses of the law, but it was not so obvious to the con- 
ceptions of man in his innocent state. Life indeed was implied to 
be promised upon his standing, but not so glorious an immortality 
disclosed, to be reserved for him, if he stood: as it is a covenant of 
better promises, so a covenant of sweeter comforts ; comforts more 
choice, and comforts more durable; an “everlasting consolation, 
and a good hope” are the fruits of “grace,” 2. e. the covenant of 
grace (2 Thess. ii. 16). In the whole there is such a love disclosed, 
as cannot be expressed; the apostle leaves it to every man’s mind 
to conceive it, if he could, ““ What manner of love the Father hath 
bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God” 
(1 John iii. 1). It instates us in such a manner of the love of God 
as he bears to his Son, the image of his person (John xvu. 28): 
“That the world may know that thou hast loved them, as thou hast 
loved me.” 

3. This goodness appears in the choice gift of himself which he 
hath made over in this covenant (Gen. xvu. 7). You know how it 
runs in Scripture: “I will be therr God, and they shall be my peo- 
ple” (Jer. xxxii. 88): a propriety in the Deity is made over by it. 
As he gave the blood of his Son to seal the covenant, so he gave 
himself as the blessing of the covenant; “ He is not ashamed to be 
called their God” (Heb. xi. 16). Though he be environed with mil- 
lions of angels, and presides over them in an inexpressible glory, he 
is not ashamed of his condescensions to man, and to pass over him- 
self as the propriety of his people, as well as to take them to be his. 
Itis a diminution of the sense of the place, to understand it of God, 
as Creator; what reason was there for God to be ashamed of the ex- 
pressions of his power, wisdom, goodness, in the works of his hands? 
But we might have reason to think there might be some ground in 
God to be ashamed of making himself over in a deed of gift to a 
mean worm and filthy rebel; this might seem a disparagement to 
his majesty ; but God is not ashamed ofa title so mean, as the God 
of his despised people; a title below those others, of the “Lord of 
hosts, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders, riding 
on the wings of the wind, walking in the circuits of heaven.” He is 
no more ashamed of this title of being our God, than he is of those 
other that sound more glorious; he would rather have his greatness 
veil to his goodness, than his goodness be confined by his majesty ; 
he is not only our God, but our God as he is the God of Christ: he 
is not ashamed to be our propriety, and Christ is not ashamed to own 
his people in a partnership with him in this propriety (John xx. 


278 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


17): “Tascend to my God, and your God.” This of God’s being 
our God, is the quintessence of the covenant, the soul of all the 
promises: in this he hath promised whatsoever is infinite in him, 
whatsoever is the glory and ornament of his nature, for our use; not 
a part of him, or one single perfection, but the whole vigor and 
strength of all. As he is not a God without infinite wisdom, and in- 
finite power, and infinite goodness, and infinite blessedness, &c., so 
he passes over, in this covenant, all that which presents him as the 
most adorable Being to his creatures; he will be to them as great, 
as wise, as powerful, as good as he isin himself; and the assuring 
us, In this covenant, to be our God, imports also that he will do as 
much for us, as we would do for ourselves, were we furnished with 
the same goodness, power, and wisdom : in being our God, he testi- 
fies it is all one, as 1f we had the same perfections in our own power 
to employ for our use; for he being possessed with them, it is as 
much asif we ourselves were possessed with them, for our own ad- 
vantage, according to the rules of wisdom, and the several conditions 
we pass through for his glory. But this must be taken with a rela- 
tion to that wisdom, which he observes in his proceedings with us as 
ereatures, and according to the several conditions we pass through 
for his glory. Thus God’s being ours is more than if all heaven and 
earth were ours besides; it is more than if we were fully our own, 
and at our own dispose; it makes “all things that God hath ours” 
(1 Cor. 11. 22); and therefore, not only all things he hath created, 
but all things that he can create; not only all things that he hath 
contrived, but all things that he can contrive: for in being ours, his 
power is ours, his possible power as well as his active power; his 
power, whereby he can effect more than he hath done, and his wis- 
dom, whereby he can contrive more than he hath done; so that if 
there were need of employing his power to create many worlds for 
our good, he would not stick at it; for if he did, he would not be 
our God, in the extent of his nature, as the promise intimates. What 
a rich goodness, and a fulness of bounty, is there in this short ex- 
pression, as full as the expression of a God can make it, to be intelli- 
gible, to such creatures as we are ! 

4. This goodness is further manifest in the confirmation of the 
covenant. His goodness did not only condescend to make it for our 
happiness, after we had made ourselves miserable, but further conde- 
scended to ratify it in the solemnest manner for our assurance, te 
overrule all the despondencies unbelief could raise up in our souls. 
The reason why he confirmed it by an oath, was to show the immu- 
tability of his glorious counsel, not to tie himself to keep it, for his 
word and promise is in itself as immutable as his oath; they were 
“two immutable things, his word and his oath,” one as unchange- 
able as the other; but for the strength of our consolation, that it 
might have no reason to shake and totter (Heb. v1.17, 18): he would 
condescend as low as was possible for a God to do for the satisfaction 
of the dejected creature. When the first covenant was broken, and 
it was impossible for man to fulfil the terms of it, and mount to hap- 
piness thereby, he makes another ; and, as if we had reason to dis- 
trust him in the first, he solemnly ratifies it in a higher manner than 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 279 


he had done the other, and swears by himself that he will be true to 
it, not so much out of an election of himself, as the object of the 
oath (Heb. vi. 18): ‘Because he could not swear by a greater, he 
swears by himself;” whereby the apostle clearly intimates, that Di- 
vine goodness was raised to such a height for us, that if there had 
been anything else more sacred than himself, or that could have 
punished him if he had broken it, that he would have sworn by, to 
silence any diffidence in us, and confirm us in the reality of his in- 
tentions. Now if it were a mighty mark of goodness for God to stoop 
to a covenanting with us, it was more for a sovereign to bind him- 
self so solemnly to be our debtor in a promise, as well as he was our 
sovereign in the precept, and stoop so low in it to satisfy the distrust 
of that creature, that deserved for ever to le soaking in his own 
ruins, for not believing his bare word. What absolute prince would 
ever stoop so low as to article with rebellious subjects, whom he 
could in a moment set his foot upon and crush ; much less counten- 
ance a causeless distrust of his goodness by the addition of his oath, 
and thereby bind his own hands, which were unconfined before, and 
free to do what he pleased with them ? 

5. Tuais goodness of God is remarkable also in the condition of this 
covenant which is faith. This was the easiest condition, in its own 
nature, that could be imagined; no difficulty in it but what proceeds 
from the pride of man’s nature, and the obstinacy of his will. It 
was not impossible in itself; it was not the old condition of perfect 
obedience. It had been mighty goodness to set us up again upon our 
old stock, and restore us to the tenor and condition of the covenant 
of works, or to have required the burdensome ceremonies of the law. 
Nor is it an exact knowledge he requires of us; all men’s under- 
standings being of a different size, they had not been capable of this. 
It was the most reasonable condition, mm regard of the excellency of 
the things proposed, and the effects followimg upon it; nay, it was 
necessary. It had been a want of goodness to himself and his own 
honor; he had cast that off, had he not insisted on this condition of 
faith, it being the lowest he could condescend to with a salvo for his 
glory. And it was a goodness to us; it is nothing else he requires, 
but a willingness to accept what he hath contrived and acted for us: 
and no man can be happy against his will; without this belief, at 
least, man could never voluntarily have arrived to his happiness. 
The goodness of God is evidenced in that. 

[ist.] It is an easy condition, not impossible. 1. It was not the 
condition of the old covenant. The condition of that was an entire 
obedience to every precept with a man’s whole strength, and with- 
out any flaw or crack. But the condition of the evangelical cove- 
nant is a sincere, though weak, faith; He hath suited this covenant 
to the misery of man’s fallen condition; he considers our weakness, 
and that we are but dust, and therefore exacts not of us an entire, 
but a sincere, obedience. Had God sent Christ toexpiate the crime 
of Adam, restore him to his paradise estate, and repair in man the 
ruined image of holiness, and after this to have renewed the coven- 
ant of works for the future, and settled the same condition in exact- 
ing a complete obedience for the time to come; Divine goodness had 


280 CHARNOUK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


been above any accusation, and had deserved our highest admiration 
in the pardon of former transgressions, and giving out to us our 
first stock. But Divine goodness took larger strides: he had tried 
our first condition, and found his mutable creature quickly to vio- 
late it: had he demanded the same now, it is likely it had met with 
the same issue as before, in man’s disobedience and fall; we should 
have been as men, as Adam (Hos. vi. 7), “‘transgressing the coven- 
ant;” and then we must have lain groaning under our disease, and 
wallowing in our blood, unless Christ had come to die for the expi- 
ation of our new crimes; for every transgression had been a vio'a- 
tion of that covenant, and a forfeiture of our nght to the benefits 
of it. If we had broke it but in one tittle, we had rendered our- 
selves incapable to fulfil it for the futare; that one transgression 
had stood as a bar against the pleas of after-obedience. But God 
hath wholly laid that condition aside as to us, and settled that 
of faith, more easy to be performed, and to be renewed by us. It 
is infinite grace in him, that he will accept of faith in us, instead of 
that perfect obedience he required of us in the covenant of works. 
2. It is easy, not like the burdensome ceremonies appointed under 
the law. He exacts not now the legal obedience, expensive sacri- 
fices, troublesome purifications, and abstinences, that ‘“ yoke of bon- 
dage” (Gal. v. 1) which they were “not able to bear” (Acts xv. 10). 
He treats us not as servants, or children, in their nonage, under the 
elements of the world, nor requires those innumerable bodily exer- 
cises that he exacted of them: he demands not ‘‘a thousand of lambs,” 
and “ rivers of oil;” but he requires a sincere confession and repent- 
ance, in order to our absolution; an “unfeigned faith,” m order to 
our blessedness, and elevation to a glorious life. He requires only 
that we should believe what he saith, and have so good an opinion 
of his goodness and veracity, as to persuade ourselves of the reality 
of his intentions, confide in his word, and rely upon his promise, 
cordially embrace his crucified Son, whom he hath set forth as the 
means of our happiness, and have a sincere respect to all the dis- 
coveries of his will. What can be more easy than this? Though 
some in the days of the apostles, and others since have endeavored 
to introduce a multitude of legal burdens, as if they envied God the 
expressions of his goodness, or thought him guilty of too much re- 
missness, in taking off the yoke, and treating man too favorably. 
8. Nor is ita clear knowledge of every revelation, that is the condition 
of this covenant. God in his kindness to man hath made revelations 
of himself, but his goodness is manifested in obliging us to believe 
him, not fully to understand him. He hath made them, by sufficient 
testimonies, as clear to our faith, as they are incomprehensible to our 
reason: he hath revealed a Trinity of Persons, in their distinct offices, 
in the business of redemption, without which revelation of a 'l'rinity 
we could not have a right notion and scheme of redeeming grace. 
But since the clearness of men’s understanding is sullied by the fall, 
and hath lost its wings to fly up to a knowledge of such sublime 
things as that of the Trinity, and other mysteries of the Christian 
religion, God hath manifested his goodness in not obliging us to un- 
derstand them but to believe them; and hath given us reason enough 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 281 


to believe it to be his revelation, (both from the nature of the reve- 
lation itself, and the way and manner of propagating it, which is 
wholly divine, exceeding all the methods of human art,) though he 
hath not extended our understandings to a capacity to know them, 
and render a reason of every mystery. He did not require of every 
Israelite, or of any of them that were stung by the fiery serpents, 
that they should understand, or be able to discourse of the nature 
and qualities of that brass of which the serpent upon the pole was 
made, or by what art that serpent was formed, or in what manner 
the sight of it did operate in them for their cure; it was enough that 
they did believe the institution and precept of God, and that their 
own cure was assured by it: it was enough if they cast their eyes 
upon it according to the direction. The understandings of men are 
of several sizes and elevations, one higher than another: if the con- 
dition of this covenant had been a greatness of knowledge, the most 
acute men had only enjoyed the benefits of it. But it is “ faith,” 
which is as easy to be performed by the ignorant and simple, as by 
the strongest and most towering mind: it is that which is within the 
compass of every man’s understanding. God did not require that 
every one within the verge of the covenant should be able to dis- 
course of it to the reasons of men; he required not that every man 
should be a philosopher, or an orator, but a believer. What could 
be more easy than to lift up the eye to the brazen serpent, to be 
cured of a fiery sting? What could be more facile than a glance, 
which is done without any pain, and in amoment? It is a condition 
may be performed by the weakest as well as the strongest: could 
those that were bitten in the most vital part cast up their eyes, though 
at the last gasp, they would arise to health by the expulsion of the 
venom. 

[2d.] As it is eagy, so it is reasonable. Repent and believe, is 
that which is required by Christ and the apostles for the enjoyment 
of the kingdom of heaven. It is very reasonable that things so great 
and glorious, so beneficial to men, and revealed to them by so sound 
an authority, and an unerring truth, should be believed. ‘ihe ex- 
cellency of the thing disclosed could admit of no lower a condition 
than to be believed and embraced. There is a sort of faith, that is 
a natural condition in everything: all religion in the world, though 
never so false, depends upon a sort of it; for unless there be a be- 
hef of future things, there would never be a hope of good, or a fear 
of evil, the two great hinges upon which religion moves. In all 
kinds of learning, many things must be believed before a progress 
can be made. Belief of one another is necessary in all acts of hu- 
man life; without which human society would be unlinked and dis- 
solved. What is that faith that God requires of us in this covenant, 
but a willingness of soul to take God for our God, Christ for our 
Mediator, and the procurer of our happiness (Rev. xxil.17)? What 
prince could require less upon any promise he makes his subjects, 
than to be believed as true, and depended on as good; that they 
should accept his pardon, and other gracious offers, and be sincere 
in their allegiance to him, avoiding all things that may offend him, 
and pursuing all things that may please him? Thus God, by so 


282 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


small and reasonable a condition as faith, lets in the fruits of Christ’s 
death into our soul, and wraps us up in the fruition of all the privi- 
leges purchased by it. So much he hath condescended in his good- 
ness, that upon so slight a condition we may plead his promise, and 
humbly challenge, by virtue of the covenant, those good things he 
hath promised in his word. It is so reasonable a condition, that if 
God did not require it in the covenant of grace, the creature were 
obliged to perform it: for the publishing any truth from God, natu- 
rally calls for credit to be given it by the creature, and an entertain- 
ment of it in practice. Could you offer a more reasonable condi- 
tion yourselves, had it been left to your choice? Should a prince 
proclaim a pardon to a profligate wretch, would not all the world cry 
shame of him, if he did not believe it upon the highest assurances ? 
and if ingenuity did not make him sorry for his crimes, and careful 
in the duty of a subject, surely the world would cry shame of such 
a person. 

(3d.] It is a necessary condition. 1. Necessary for the honor of 
God. A prince is disparaged if his authority in his law, and if his 
graciousness in his promises, be not accepted and believed. W hat 
physician would undertake a cure, if his precepts may not be cred- 
ited? It is the first thing in the order of nature, that the revelation 
of God should be believed, that the reality of his intentions in in- 
viting man to the acceptance of those methods he hath prescribed 
for their attaining their chief happiness, should be acknowledged. 
It is a debasing notion of God, that he should give a happiness, 
purchased by Divine blood, to a person that hath no value for it, nor 
any abhorrency of those sins that occasioned so great a suffering, nor 
any will to avoid them: should he not vilify himself, to bestow a 
heaven upon that man that will not believe the offers of it, nor walk 
in those ways that lead to it? that walks so, as if he would declare 
there was no truth in his word, nor holiness in his nature? \ Would 
not God by such an act verify a truth in the language of their prac- 
tice, viz. that he were both false and impure, careless of his word, 
and negligent of his holiness? As God was so desirous to ensure 
the consolation of believers, that if there had been a greater Being | 
than himself to attest, and for him to be responsible to, for the con- 
firmation of his promise, he would willingly have submitted to him, 
and have made him the umpire, ‘‘ He swore by himself, because he 
could not swear by a greater” (Heb. vi. 19); by the same reason, 
had it stood with the majesty and wisdom of God to stoop to lower 
conditions in this covenant, for the reducing of man to his duty and 
happiness, he would have done it; but his goodness could not take 
lower steps, with the preservation of the rights of his majesty, and 
the honor of his wisdom. Would you have had him wholly sub- 
mitted to the obstinate will of a rebellious creature, and be ruled 
only by his terms? Would you have had him received men to nap- 
piness, after they had heightened their crimes by a contempt of his 
grace, as well as of his creating goodness, and have made them 
blessed under the guilt of their crimes without an acknowledgment? 
Should he glorify one that will not believe what he hath revealed, 
nor repent of what himself hath committed; and so save a man after 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 283 


a repeated unthankfulness to the most immense grace that ever was, 
or can be, discovered and offered, without a detestation of his ingrat- 
itude, and a voluntary acceptance of his offers? It is necessary, for 
the honor of God, that man should accept of his terms, and not give 
laws to him to whom he is obnoxious as a guilty person, as well as 
subject as a creature. Again, it was very equitable and necessary 
for the honor of God, that since man fell by an unbelief of his pre- 
cept and threatening, he should not rise again without a belief of his 
promise, and casting himself upon his truth in that: since he had 
vilified the honor of his truth in the threatening; since man in his 
fall would lean to his own understanding against God, it is fit that, 
in his recovery, the highest powers of his soul, his understanding 
and will, should be subjected to him in an entire resignation. Now, 
whereas knowledge seems to have a power over its object, faith is a 
full submission to that which is the object of it. Since man intended 
a glorying in himself, the evangelical covenant directs its whole bat- 
tery against it, that men may “glory in nothing but Divine good- 
ness” (1 Cor. i. 29—31). Had man performed exact obedience by his 
own strength, he had had something in himself as the matter of his 
glory. And though, after the fall, grace had made itself illustrious in 
setting him up upon a new stock, yet had the same condition of exact 
obedience been settled in the same manner, man would have had 
something to glory in, which is struck off wholly by faith ; whereby 
man in every act must go out of himself for a supply, to that Medi- 
ator which Divine goodness and grace hath appointed. 2. It is ne- 
cessary for the happiness of man. That can be no contenting con- 
dition wherein the will of man doth not concur. He that is forced 
to the most delicious diet, or to wear the bravest apparel, or to be 
stored with abundance of treasure, cannot be happy in those things 
without an esteem of them, and delight in them: if they be nau- 
seous to him, the indisposition of his mind is a dead fly in those 
boxes of precious ointment. Now, faith being a sincere willingness 
to accept of Christ, and to come to God by him, and repentance be- 
ing a detestation of that which made man’s separation from God, it 
is impossible he could be voluntarily happy without it: man cannot 
attain and enjoy a true happiness without an operation of his under- 
standing about the object proposed, and the means appointed to en- 
joy it. There must be a knowledge of what is offered, and of the 
way of it, and such a knowledge as may determine the will to affect 
that end, and embrace those means; which the will can never do, 
till the understanding be fully persuaded of the truth of the offerer, 
and the goodness of the proposal itself, and the conveniency of the 
means for the attaining of it. It is necessary, in the nature of the 
thing, that what is revealed should be believed to be a Divine reve- 
lation. God must be judged true in the promising justification and 
sanctification, the means of happiness; and if any man desires to be 
partaker of those promises, he must desire to be sanctified ; and how 
can he desire that which is the matter of those promises, if he wal- 
low in his own lusts, and desire to do so, a thing repugnant to the 
promise itself? Would you have God force man to be happy against 
his will? Is it not very reasonable he should demand the consent 


284 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of his reasonable creature to that blessedness he offers him? The 
new covenant is a “marriage covenant” (Hos. u. 16, 19, 20), which 
implies a consent on our parts, as well as a consent on God’s part; 
that is no marriage that hath not the consent of both parties. Now 
faith is our actual consent, and repentance and sincere obedience are 
the testimonies of the truth and reality of this consent. 

6th. Divine goodness is eminent in his methods of treating with 
men to embrace this covenant. They are methods of gentleness and 
sweetness: it is a wooing goodness, and a bewailing goodness; his 
expressions are with strong motions of affection: he carrieth not on 
the gospel by force of arms: he doth not solely menace men into it, 
as worldly conquerors have done; he doth not, as Mahomet, plunder 
men’s estates, and wound their bodies, to imprint a religion on their 
souls: he doth not erect gibbets, and kindle faggots, to scare men 
to an entering into covenant with him. What multitudes might he 
have raised by his power, as well as others! What legions of angels 
might he have rendezvoused from heaven, to have beaten men into 
a profession of the gospel! Nor doth he only interpose his sove- 
reign authority in the precept of faith, but useth rational expostula 
tions, to move men voluntarily to comply with his proposals (Isa. 1. 18), 
‘(Come now, and let us reason together,” saith the Lord. He seems 
to call heaven and earth to be judge, whether he had been wanting 
in any reasonable ways of goodness, to overcome the perversity of 
the creature; (Isa. i. 2), ‘‘ Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, I 
have nourished and brought up children.” What various en- 
couragements doth he use agreeable to the nature of men, endeavor- 
ing to persuade them with all tenderness, not to despise their own 
mercies, and be enemies to their own happiness! He would allure 
us by his beauty, and win us by his merey. He uses the arms of 
his own excellency and our necessity to prevail upon us, and this 
after the highest provocations. When Adam had trampled upon 
his creating goodness, it was not crushed ; and when man had cast 
it from him, it took the higher rebound: when the rebel’s provoca- 
tion was fresh in his mind, he sought him out with a promise in his 
hand, though Adam fled from him out of enmity as well as fear 
(Gen. iii). And when the Jews had outraged his Son, whom he 
loved from eternity, and made the Lord of heaven and earth bow 
down his head like a slave on the cross, yet in that place, where the 
most horrible wickedness had been committed, must the gospel be 
preached: the law must go forth out of that Sion, and the apostles 
must not stir from thence till they had received the promise of the 
Spirit, and published the word of grace in that ungrateful city, 
whose inhabitants yet swelled with indignation against the Lord of 
Life, and the doctrine he had preached among them (Luke xxiv. 
47: Actsi.4, 5). He would overlook their indignities out of ten- 
derness to their souls, and expose the apostles to the peril of their 
lives, rather than expose his enemies to the fury of the devil. 

1. How affectionately doth he invite men! hat. multitudes of 
alluring promises and pressing exhortations are there everywhere 
sprinkled in the Scripture, and im such a passionate manner, as if 
God were solely concerned in our good, without a glance on hisown 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 285 


glory! How tenderly doth he woo flinty hearts, and express more 
pity to them than they do to themselves! With what affection do 
his bowels rise up to his lips in his speech in the prophet, Isa. hi. 4, 
‘“ Hearken to me, O my people, and give ear unto me, O my nation!” 
“My people,” “‘my nation !”—melting expressions of a tender God 
soliciting a rebellious people to make their retreat to him. He never 
emptied his hand of his bounty, nor divested his lips of those chari- 
table expressions. Hesent Noah to move the wicked of the old 
world to an embracing of his goodness, and frequent prophets to the 
provoking Jews; and as the world continued, and grew up to a 
taller stature in sin, he stoops more in the manner of his expres- 
sions. Never was the world at a higher pitch of idolatry than at 
the first publishing the gospel; yet, when we should have expected 
him to be a punishing, he is a beseeching God. ‘The apostle fears 
not to use the expression for the glory of .ivine goodness; ‘We 
are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us” 
(2 Cor. vy. 20). The beseeching voice of God is in the voice of the 
ministry, as the voice of the prince is in that of the herald: it is as 
if Divine goodness did kneel down to a sinner with ringed hands 
and blubbered cheeks, entreating him not to force him to re-assume 
a tribunal of justice in the nature of a Judge, since he would treat 
with man upon a throne of grace in the nature of a Father; yea, he 
seems to put himself into the posture of the criminal, that the offend- 
ing creature might not feel the punishment due to a rebel. Itisnot 
the condescension, but the interest, of a traitor to creep upon his 
knees in sackcloth to his sovereign, to beg his life; but it is a mirac- 
ulous goodness in the sovereign to creep in the lowest posture to the 
rebel, to importune him, not only for an amity to him, but a love for 
his own life and happiness: this He doth, not only in his general 
proclamations, but in his particular wooings, those inward courtings 
of his Spirits, soliciting them with more diligence (if they would ob- 
serve it) to their happiness, than the devil tempts them to the ways 
of their misery: as he was first in Christ, reconciling the world, 
when the world looked not after him, so he is first in his Spirit, 
wooing the world to accept of that reconciliation, when the world 
will not listen to him. How often doth he flash up the light of na- 
ture and the light of the word in men’s hearts, to move them not to 
he down in sparks of their own kindling, but to aspire to a better 
happiness, and prepare them to be subject to a higher mercy, if they 
would improve his present entreaties to such an end! And what 
are his threatenings designed for, but to move the wheel of our 
fears, that the wheel of our desire and love might be set on motion 
for the embracing his promise? They are not so much the thun- 
ders of his justice, as the loud rhetoric of his good will, to prevent 
men’s misery under the vials of wrath: it is his kindness to scare 
men by threatenings, that justice might not strike them with the 
sword: it is not the destruction, but the preserving reformation, that 
he aims at: he hath no pleasure in the death of the wicked; this he 
confirms by his oath. His threatenings are gracious expostulations 
with them: “ Why will ye die,O house of Israel” (Ezek. xxxiul. 
11)? ‘They are like the noise a favorable officer makes in the street, 


286 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


to warn the criminal he comes to seize upon, to make his escape: he 
never used his justice to crush men, till he had used his kindness to 
allure them. All the dreadful descriptions of a future wrath, as well 
as the lively descriptions of the happiness of another world, are de- 
signed to persuade men; the honey of his goodness is in the bowels 
of those roaring lions: such pains doth Goodness take with men, to 
make them candidates for heaven. | 

2. How readily doth he receive men when they do return! We 
have David’s experience for it (Ps. xxxii. 5); “I said, I will confess 
my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity 
of my sin. Selah.” A sincere look from the creature draws out his 
arms, and opens his bosom; he is ready with his physic to heal us, 
upon a resolution to acquaint him with our disease, and by his med- 
icines prevents the putting our resolution into a petition. ‘The 
Psalmist adds a ‘‘ Selah” to it, as a special note of thankfulness for 
Divine goodness. He doth not only stand ready, to receive our pe- 
titions while we are speaking, but answers us before we call (Isa. 
Ixy. 24); listening to the motions of our heart, as well as to the sup- 
plications of our lips. He is the true Father, that hath a quicker 
pace in meeting, than the prodigal hath in returning; who would 
not have his embraces and caresses interrupted by his confession 
(Luke xv. 20—22); the confession follows, doth not precede, the 
Father’s compassion. How doth he rejoice in having an opportu- 
_ nity to express his grace, when he hath prevailed with a rebel to 
throw down his arms, and he at his feet; and this because ‘he de- 
lights in mercy” (Micah. vii. 18)! He delights in the expressions of 
it from himself, and the acceptance of it by his creature. 

3. How meltingly doth he bewail man’s wilful refusal of his good- 
ness! It is a mighty goodness to offer grace to a rebel; a mighty 
goodness to give it him after he hath a while stood off from the 
terms; an astonishing goodness to regret and lament his wilful per- 
dition. He seems to utter those words in a sigh, ‘ O that my people 
had hearkened unto me, and Israel had walked in my way” (Ps. 
Ixxxi. 18)! It is true, God hath not human passions, but his affec- 
tions cannot be expressed otherwise in a way intelligible to us; the 
excellency of his nature is above the passions of men; but such ex- 
pressions of himself manifest to us the sincerity of his goodness: and 
that, were he capable of our passions, he would express himself in 
such a manner as we do: and we find incarnate Goodness bewailing 
with tears and sighs the ruin of Jerusalem (Luke xix. 42). By the » 
same reason that when a sinner returns there is joy in heaven, upon 
his obstinacy there is sorrow in earth. The one is, as if a prince 
should clothe all his court in triumphant scarlet, upon a rebel’s re- 
pentance; and the other, as if a prince put himself and his court in 
mourning for a rebel’s obstinate refusal of a pardon, when he lies at 
his mercy. Are not now these affectionate invitations, and deep be- 
wailings of their perversity, high testimonies of Divine goodness? 
Do not the unwearied repetitions of gracious encouragements deserve 
a higher name than that of mere goodness? What can be a stronger 
evidence of the sincerity of it, than the sound of his saving voice in 
our enjoyments, the motion of his Spirit in our hearts, and his grief 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 287 


for the neglect of all? These are not testimonies of any want of 
goodness in his nature to answer us, or unwillingness to express it to 
his creature. Hath he any mind to deceive us, that thus intreats us ? 
The majesty of his nature is too great for such shifts; or, if it were 
not, the despicableness of our condition would render him above the 
using any. Who would charge that physician with want of kind- 
ness, that freely offers his sovereign medicine, importunes men, by 
the love they have to their health, to take it, and is dissolved into 
tears and sorrow when he finds it rejected by their peevish and con- 
ceited humor? 

7th. Divine goodness is eminent in the sacraments he hath affixed 
to this covenant, especially the Lord’s supper. -As he gave himself 
in his Son, so he gives his Son in the sacrament; he doth not only 
give him as a sacrifice upon the cross for the expiation of our crimes, 
but as a feast upon the table for the nourishment of our souls: in 
the one he was given to be offered; in this he gives him to be par- 
taken of, with all the fruits of his death; under the image of the 
sacramental signs, every believer doth eat the flesh, and drink the 
blood of the great Mediator of the covenant. The words of Christ, 
“This is my body, and this is my blood,” are true to the end of the 
world (Matt. xxvi. 26, 28). This is the most delicious viand of 
heaven, the most exquisite dainty food God can feed us with: the 
delight of the Deity, the admiration of angels; a feast with God is 
great, but a feast on God is greater. Under those signs that body is 
presented ; that which was conceived by the Spirit, inhabited by the 
Godhead, bruised by the Father to be our food, as well as our pro- 
pitiation, is presented to us on the table. That blood which satisfied 
justice, washed away our guilt on the cross, and pleads for our per- 
sons at the throne of grace; that blood which silenced the curse, 
pacified heaven, and purged earth, is given to us for our refreshment. 
This is the bread sent from heaven, the true manna; the cup is “‘the 
cup of blessing,” and, therefore, a cup of goodness (1 Cor. x. 15). 
Itis true, bread doth not cease to be bread, nor the wine cease to be 
wine; neither of them lose their substance, but both acquire a sanc- 
tification, by the relation they have to that which they represent, 
and give a nourishment to that faith that receives them. In those 
God offers us a remedy for the sting of sin, and troubles of con- 
science; he gives us not the blood of a mere man, or the blood of 
an incarnate angel, but of God blessed forever ; a blood that can se- 
cure us against the wrath of heaven, and the tumults of our con- 
sciences; a blood that can wash away our sins, and beautify our 
souls; a blood that hath more strength than our filth, and more prev- 
alency than our accuser; a blood that secures us against the terrors 
of death, and purifies us for the blessedness of heaven. The goodness 
of God complies with our senses, and condescends to our weakness ; 
he instructs us by the eye, as well as by the ear; he lets us see, and 
taste, and feel him, as well as hear him; he veils his glory under 
earthly elements, and informs our understanding in the mysteries of 
salvation by signs familiar to our senses; and because we cannot 
with our bodily eyes behold him in his glory, he presents him to the 
eyes of our minds in elements, to affect our understandings in the 


288 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


representations of his death. The body of Christ crucified is more 
visible to our spiritual sense, than the invisible Deity could be visible 
in his flesh upon earth; and the power of his body and blood is as 
well experimented in our souls, as the power of his Divinity was 
seen by the Jews in his miraculous actions in his body in the world. 
It is the goodness of God, to mind us frequentty of the great things 
Christ hath purchased; that as himself would not let them be out 
of his mind, to communicate them to us, so he would give us means 
to preserve them in our minds, to adore him for them, and request 
them of him; whereby he doth evidence his own solicitousness, that 
we should not be deprived by our own forgetfulness of that grace 
Christ hath purchased for us; it was to remember the Redeemer, 
‘and show his death till he came” (1 Cor. xi. 25, 26). 

1. His goodness is seen in the end of it, which is a sealing the cov- 
enant of grace. The common nature and end of sacraments is to 
seal the covenant they belong to, and the truths of the promises of 
it.f The legal sacraments of circumcision and the passover sealed the 
legal promises and the covenant in the Judicial administration of it; 
and the evangelical sacraments seal the evangelical promises, as a 
ring confirms a contract of marriage, and a seal the articles of a 
compact; by the same reason, circumcision is called a ‘‘seal of the 
righteousness of faith” (Rom. iv. 11); other sacraments may have 
the same title; God doth attest, that he will remain firm in his prom- 
ise, and the receiver attests he will remain firm in his faith. In all 
reciprocal covenants, there are mutual engagements, and that which 
serves for a seal on the part of the one, serves for a seal also on the 
part of the other; God obligeth himself to the performance of the 
promise, and man engageth himself to the performance of his duty. 
The thing confirmed by this sacrament is the perpetuity of this cov- 
enant in the blood of Christ, whence it is called “the New Testa- 
ment,” or covenant “in the blood of Christ” (Luke xxi. 20). In 
every repetition of it, God, by presenting, confirms his resolution to 
us, of sticking to this covenant for the merit of Christ’s blood; and 
the receiver, by eating the body and drinking the blood, engageth 
himself to keep close to the condition of faith, expecting a full sal- 
vation and a blessed immortality upon the merit of the same blood 
alone. This sacrament could not be called the ‘‘ New Testament, or 
Covenant,” if it had not some relation to the covenant; and what it 
can be but this, I do not understand. The covenant itself was con- 
firmed “ by the death of Christ” (Heb. ix. 15), and thereby made un- 
changeable both in the benefits to us, and the condition required of 
us; but he seals it to our sense in a sacrament, to give us strong con- 
solation; or, rather, the articles of the covenant of redemption be- 
tween the Father and the Son, agreed on from eternity, were accom- 
plished on Christ’s part by his death, on the Father’s part by his 
resurrection; Christ performed what he promised in the one, and God 
acknowledgeth the validity of it, and performs what he had promised 
in the other. The covenant of grace, founded upon this covenant of 
redemption, is sealed in the sacrament; God owns his standing to the 
terms of it, as sealed by the blood of the Mediator, by presenting 


f Amyral, Irenicum. pp. 16, 17. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 289 


him to us under those signs, and gives us a right upon faith to the 
enjoyment of the fruits of it. As the right of a house is made over 
by the delivery of the key, and the right of land translated by the 
delivery of a turf; whereby he gives us assurance of his reality, and 
a strong support to our confidence in him; not that there is any 
virtue and power of sealing in the elements themselves, no more 
than there is in a turf to give an enfeoffment in a parcel of land; but 
as the power of one is derived from the order of the law, so the con- 
firming power of the sacrament is derived from the institution of 
God; as the oil wherewith kings were annointed, did not of itself 
confer upon them that royal dignity, but it was a sign of their inves- 
titure into office, ordered by Divine institution. We can with no 
reason imagine, that God intended them as naked signs or pictures, to 
please our eyes with the image of them, to represent their own fig- 
ures to our eyes, but to confirm something to our understanding by 
the efficacy of the Spirit accompanying them:¢ they convey to the 
believing receiver what they represent, as the great seal of a prince, 
fixed to the parchment, doth the pardon of a rebel as well as its own 
figure. Christ’s death, and the grace of the covenant is not only sig- 
nified, but the fruits and merit of that death communicated also. 
Thus doth Divine goodness evidence itself, not only in making a 
eracious covenant with us, but fixing seals to it; not to strengthen 
his own obligation, which stood stronger than the foundations of 
heaven and earth, upon the credit of his word, but to strengthen our 
weakness, and support our security, by something which might ap- 
pear more formal and solemn than a bare word. By this, the Divine 
goodness provides against our spiritual faintings, and shows us by real 
signs as well as verbal declarations, that the covenant sealed by the 
blood of Christ, is unalterable ; and thereby would fortify and mount 
our hopes to degrees in some measure suitable to the kindness of the 
covenant, and the dignity of the Redeemer’s blood. And it is yet a 
further degree of this goodness, that he hath appointed us so often 
to celebrate it, whereby he shows how careful he is to keep up our 
tottering faith, and preserve us constant in our obedience; obliging 
himself to the performance of his promise, and obliging us to the pay- 
ment of our duty. 

9. His goodness is seen in the sacrament in giving us in it an 
union and communion with Christ. There is not only a commemo- 
ration of Christ dying, but a communication of Christ hving. The 
apostle strongly asserts it by way of interrogation (1 Cor. x. 16), 
“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of 
the blood of Christ? the bread which we break, is it not the com- 
munion of the body of Christ?” In the cup there is a communica- 
tion of the blood of Christ, a conveyance of a right to the merits of 
his death, and the blessedness of his life: we are not less by this 
made one body with Christ than we are by baptism (1 Cor. xu. 18): 
and “put on Christ” living in this, as well as in baptism (Gal. i. 
27); that as his taking our infirm flesh was a real incarnation, so the 
giving us his flesh to eat is a mystical incarnation in believers, where- 
by they become one body with him as crucified, and one body with 


& Daille, Melang. Part I, p. 253. 
VOL. 11.—19 


290 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


him as risen ; for if Christ himself be received by faith in the word 
(Col. ii. 6), he is no less received by faith in the sacrament. When 
the Holy Ghost is said to be received, the graces or gifts of the Holy 
Ghost are received; so when Christ is received, the fruits of his 
death are really partaken of. The Israelites that ate of the sacrifices, 
did ‘‘ partake of the altar” (1 Cor. x. 18), @ e. had a communion with 
the God of Israel, to whom they had been sacrificed; and those that 
‘ate of the sacrifices” offered to idols, had a “fellowship with devils,” 
to whom those sacrifices were offered (ver. 20). Those that partake 
of the sacraments in a due manner, have a communion with that 
God to whom it was sacrificed, and a communion with that body 
which was sacrificed to God; not that the substance of that body 
and blood is wrapped up in the elements, or that the bread and wine 
are transformed into the body and blood of Christ, but as they re- 
present him, and by virtue of the institution are, in estimation him- 
self, his own body and blood; by the same reason as he is called 
‘Christ our passover,” he may be called “ Christ our supper” (1 Cor. 
v. 7): for as they are so reckoned to an unworthy receiver, as if 
they were the real body and blood of Christ, because by his not dis- 
cerning the Lord’s body in it, or making light of it as common bread, 
he is judged. “ guilty of the body and blood of Christ,” guilty of treat- 
ing him in as base a manner as the Jews did when they crowned him 
with thorns (1 Cor. xi. 27, 29): by the same reason they must be 
reckoned to a worthy receiver, as the very body and blood of Christ: 
so that as the unworthy receiver “eats and drinks damnation,” the 
worthy receiver ‘eats and drinks” salvation. It would be an empty 
mystery, and unworthy of an institution by Divine goodness, if there 
were not some communion with Christ in it: there would be some 
kind of deceit in the precept, “Take, eat, and drink, this is my body 
and blood,” if there were not a conveyance of spiritual vital influ- 
ences to our souls: for the natural end of eating and drinking is the 
nourishment and increase of the body, and preservation of life, by 
that which we eat and drink. The infinite wise, gracious, and true 
God, would never give us empty figures without accomplishing that 
which is signified by them, and suitable to them. How great is this 
goodness of God! he would have his Son in us, one with us, straitly 
joined to us, asif we were his proper flesh and blood: in the incar- 
nation Divine goodness united him to our nature; in the sacrament, 
it doth in a sort unite him with his purchased privileges to our per- 
sons; we have not a communion with a part or a member of his 
body, or a drop of his blood, but with his whole body and blood, re- 
presented in every part of the elements. The angels in the heaven 
enjoy not so great a privilege; they have the honor to be under him 
as their Head, but not that of having him for their food; they be- 
hold him, but they do not taste him. And, certainly, that goodness 
that hath condescended so much to our weakness, would impart it to 
us in a very glorious manner, were we capable of it. But, because 
a man cannot behold the light of the sun in its full splendor by rea- 
son of the infirmities of his eyes, he must behold it by the help of a 
glass, and such a communication through a colored and opaque glass, 
is as real from the sun itself, though not so glorious, but more shrouded 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 291 


and obscure; it is the same light that shines through that medium, 
as spreads itself gloriously in the open air, though the one be masked, 
and the other open-faced. To conclude this, by the way, we may 
take notice of the neglect of this ordinance: if it be a token of 
Divine goodness to appoint it, it is no sign of our estimation of 
Divine goodness to neglect it. He that values the kindness of his 
friend, will accept of his invitation, if there be not some strong im- 
pediments in the way, or so much familiarity with him that his re- 
fusal upon a light occasion would not be unkindly taken. But 
though God put on the disposition of a friend to us, yet he looseth 
not the authority of a sovereign; and the humble familiarity he in- 
vites us to, doth not diminish the condition and duty of a subject. 
A sovereign prince would not take it well, if a favorite should refuse 
the offered honor of his table. The viands of God are not to be 
slighted. Can we live better upon our poor pittance than upon his 
dainties? Did not Divine goodness condescend in it to the weak- 
ness of owr faith, and shall we conceit our faith stronger than God 
thinks it? If he thought fit by those seals to make a deed of eift to 
us, shall we be so unmannerly to him, and such enemies to the se- 
curity he offers us over and above his word, as not to accept it? 
Are we unwilling to have our souls inflamed with love, our hearts 
filled with comfort, and armed against the attempts of our enemies ? 
It is true, there is a guilt of the body and blood of Christ contracted 
by aslightness in the manner of attending ; is it not also contracted 
by a refusal and neglect? What is the language of it? Ifitspeaks 
not the death of Christ in vain, it speaks the institution of this ordi- 
nance asa remembrance of his death, to be a vanity, and no mark of 
Divine goodness. Let us, therefore, put such a value upon Divine 
goodness in this affair, as to be willing to receive the conveyances 
of his love, and fresh engagements of our duty; the one is due from 
us to the kindness of our friend, and the other belongs to our duty 
as his subjects. ; 
vi. By this redemption God restores us to a more excellent condi- 
tion than Adam had in innocence. Christ was sent by Divine good- 
ness, not only to restore the life Adam’s sin had stripped us of, but 
to give it more abundantly than Adam’s standing could have con- 
veyed it to us (John x. 10), ‘I am come that they might have life, 
and that they might have it more abundantly.” More abundantly 
for strength, more abundantly for duration, a life abounding with 
greater felicity and glory : the substance of those better promises of 
the new covenant than what attended the old. There are fuller 
streams of grace by Christ than flowed to Adam, or could flow from 
Adam. As Christ never restored any to health and strength while 
he was in the world, but he gave them a greater measure of both 
than they had before; so there is the same kindness, no question, 
manifested in our spiritual condition. Adam’s life might have pre- 
served us, but Adam’s death could not have rescued either himself or 
his posterity; but, in our redemption, we have a Redeemer, who 
hath “died to expiate our sins,” and so erowned with life to save, 
and forever preserve our persons (Rom. v. 10), ‘“‘ Because I live, ye 
shall live also:” so that by redeeming goodness the life of a béliever 


292 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 
is as perpetual as the life of the Redeemer Christ (John xiv. 19), 
Adam, though innocent, was under the danger of perishing; a be- 
lever, though culpable, is above the fears of mutability. Adam had 
a holiness in his nature, but capable of being lost; by Christ be- 
levers have a holiness bestowed, not capable of being rifled, but 
which will remain till it be at last fully perfected: though they have 
a power to change in their nature, yet they are above an actual final 
change by the indulgence of Divine grace. Adam stood by himself; 
believers stand in a root, impossible to be shaken or corrupted: by 
this means the ‘“‘promise is sure to all the seed” (Rom. iv. 16). 
Christ is a stronger person than Adam, who can never break cove- 
nant with God, and the truth of God will never break covenant with 
him. We are united to a more excellent Head than Adam: instead 
of a root merely human, we have a root Divine as well as human. 
In him we had the righteousness of a creature merely human; in 
this we have a righteousness divine, the righteousness of God-man; 
the stock is no longer in our own hands, but in the hands of One 
that cannot embezzle it, or forfeit it: Divine goodness hath deposit- 
ed it strongly for our security. The stamp we receive, by the Divine 
goodness, from the second Adam, is more noble than that we should. 
have received from the first, had he remained in his created state : 
Adam was formed of the dust of the earth, and the new man is form- 
ed by the incorruptible seed of the word; and at the resurrection, 
the body of man shall be endued with better qualities than Adam 
had at creation: they shall be like that glorious Body which is in 
heaven, in union with the person of the ‘Son of God” (Phil. iii. 21). 
Adam, at the best, had but an earthly body, but the Lord from 
heaven hath a “ heavenly body,” the image of which shall be borne 
by the redeemed ones, as they have borne the image of the earthly 
(1 Cor. xv. 47—49). Adam had the society of beasts; redeemed 
ones expect, by Divine goodness in redemption, a commerce with 
angels; as they are reconciled to them by his death, they shall cer- 
tainly come to converse with them at the consummation of their hap- 
piness ; as they are made of one family, so they will have a peculiar 
intimacy: Adam had a paradise, and redeemed ones a heaven pro- 
vided for them; a happier place with a richer furniture. It is much 
to give so complete a paradise to innocent Adam; but more to give 
heaven to an ungrateful Adam, and his rebellious posterity: it had 
been abundant goodness to have restored us to the same condition 
in that paradise from whence we were ejected; but a superabundant 
goodness to bestow upon us a better habitation in heaven, which we 
could never have expected. How great is that goodness, when by 
sin we were fallen to be worse than nothing, that He should raise us 
to be more than what we were; that restored us, not to the first step 
of our creation, but to many degrees of elevation beyond it! not only 
restores us, but prefers us; not only striking off our chains, to set 
us free, but clothing us with a robe of righteousness, to render us 
honorable; not only quenching our hell, but preparing a heaven; 
not re-garnishing an earthly, but providing a richer palace: his good- 
ness was so great, that, after it had rescued us, it would not content 
itself with the old furniture, but makes all new for us in another 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 293 


world; a new wine to drink; a new heaven to dwell in; a more 
magnificent structure for our habitation: thus hath Goodness pre- 
pared for us a straiter union, a stronger life, a purer righteousness, 
an unshaken standing, and a fuller glory; all more excellent than 
was within the compass of innocent Adam’s possession. 

vii. This goodness in redemption extends itself to the lower crea- 
tion. It takes in, not only man, but the whole creation, except the 
fallen angels, and gives a participation of it to insensible creatures ; 
upon the account of this redemption the sun, and all kind of crea- 
tures, were preserved, which otherwise had sunk into destruction 
upon the sin of man, and ceased from their being, as man had utterly 
ceased from his happiness (Colos. 1.17): “By him all things con- 
sist.’ The fall of man brought, not only a misery upon himself, 
but a vanity upon the creature; the earth groaned under a curse for 
his sake. They were all created for the glory of God, and the sup 
port of man in the performance of his duty, who was obliged to use 
them for the honor of Him that created them both. Had man been 
true to his obligations, and used the creatures for that end to which 
they were dedicated by the Creator; as God would have then re- 
joiced in his works, so his works would have rejoiced in the honor 
of answering so excellent an end: but when man lost his integrity, 
the creatures lost their perfection; the honor of them was stained 
when they were debased to serve the lusts of a traitor, instead of 
supporting the duty of a subject, and employed in the defence of 
the vices of men against the precepts and authority of their common 
Sovereign. This was a vilifying the creature, as it would be a vili- 
fying the sword of a prince, which is, for the maintenance of justice, 
to be used for the murder of an innocent; and adishonoring a royal 
mansion, to make it a storehouse for a dunghill. Had those things 
the benefit of sense, they would gro&n under this disgrace, and rise 
up in indignation against them that offered them this affront, and 
turned them from their proper end. Whensin entered, the heavens 
that were made to shine upon man, and the earth that was made to 
bear and nourish an innocent creature, were now subjected to serve 
a rebellious creature; and as man turned against God, so he made 
those instruments against God, to serve his enmity, luxury, sensual- 
ity. Hence the creatures are said to groan (Rom. viii. 22); “ The 
whole creation groans and travails in pain together untilnow.” The 
would really groan, had they understanding to be sensible of the 
outrage done them, ‘The whole creation.”—It is the pang of uni- 
versal nature, the agony of the whole creation, to be alienated from 
the original use for which they were intended, and be disjointed from 
their end to serve the disloyalty of a rebel. The drunkard’s cup, 
and the glutton’s table, the adulterer’s bed, and the proud man’s 
purple, would groan against the abuser of them. But when all the 
fruits of redemption shall be completed, the goodness of God shall 
pour itself upon the creatures, deliver them from the “bondage of 
corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 
vill. 21); they shall be reduced to their true end, and returned in 
their original harmony. As the creation doth passionately groan 
under its vanity, so it doth “earnestly expect and wait for its de- 


294 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


liverance at the time of the manifestation of the sons of God” (ver. 
19). The manifestation of the sons of God is the attainment of the 
liberty of the creature. They shall be freed from the vanity under 
which they are enslaved; as it entered by sin, it shall vanish upon 
the total removal of sin. What use they were designed for in para- 
dise they will have afterwards, except that of the nourishment of 
men, who shall be as “angels, neither eating nor drinking :” the 
glory of God shall be seen and contemplated in them. It can hardly 
be thought that God made the world to be little a moment after he 
had reared it, sullied by the sin of man, and turned from its original 
end, without thoughts of a restoration of it to its true end, as well as 
man to his lost happiness. The world was made for man: man hath 
not yet enjoyed the creature in the first intention of them; sin made 
an interruption in that fruition. As redemption restores man to his 
' true end, so it restores the creatures to their true use. The restora- 
tion of the world to its beauty and order was the design of the 
Divine goodness in the coming of Christ, as it is intimated in Isa. xi. 
6-9; as he “came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it,” so he 
came not to destroy the creatures, but to repair them: to restore to 
God the honor and pleasure of the creation, and restore to the crea- 
tures their felicity in restoring their order: the fall corrupted it, and 
the full redemption of men restores it. The last time is called, not 
atime of destruction, but a “time of restitution,” and that “of all 
things” (Acts iii. 21) of universal nature, the main part of the crea- 
tion at least. All those things which were the effects of sin will be 
abolished ; the removal of the cause beats down the effect. The dis- 
order and unruliness of the creature, arising from the venom. of 
man’s transgression, all the fierceness of one creature against another 
shall vanish. The world shall be nothing but an universal smile ; 
nature shall put on triumphant vestments: there shall be no affright- 
ing thunders, choking mists, venomous vapors, or poisonous plants. 
It would not else be a restitution of all things. They are now sub- 
ject to be wasted by judgments for the sin of their possessor, but the 
perfection of man’s redemptions shall free them from every misery. 
‘They have an advancement at the present, for they are under a more 
glorious Head, as being the possession of Christ, the heavenly Adam, 
much superior to the first: as it is the glory of a person to be a ser- 
vant to a prince, rather than a peasant. And afterwards, they shall 
be elevated to a better state, sharing in man’s happiness, as well as 
they did in his misery: asservants are interested in the good fortune 
of their master, and bettered by his advance in his prince’s favor. 
As man in his first creation was mutable and Hable to sin, so the 
creatures were liable to vanity; but as man by grace shall be freed 
from the mutability, so shall the creatures be freed from the fears of 
an invasion, by the vanity that sullied them before. ‘The condition 
of the servants shall be suited to that of their Lord, for whom they 
were designed : hence, all creatures are called upon to rejoice upon 
the perfection of salvation, and the appearance of Christ’s royal au- 
thority in the world. If they were to be destroyed, there would be no 
eround to invite them to triumph (Ps. xevi. 11,12; exviu. 7, 8). Thus 
doth Divine goodness spread its kind arms over the whole creation. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 995 


Thirdly. The third thing is the goodness of God in his Government. 
That goodness that despised not their creation, doth not despise their 
conduct. The same goodness that was the head that framed them, 
is the helm that guides them; his goodness hovers over the whole 
frame, either to prevent any wild disorders unsuitable to his creating 
end, or to conduct them to those ends which might ilustrate his 
wisdom and goodness to his creatures. His goodness doth no less 
incline him to provide for them, than to frame them. It is the 
natural inclination of man to love what is purely the birth of his 
own strength or skill. He is fond of preserving his own inventions, 
as well as laborious in inventing them. It is the glory of a man to 
preserve them, as well as to produce them. God loves everything 
which he hath made, which love could not be without a continued 
diffusiveness to them, suitable to the end for which he made them. 
It would be a vain goodness, if it did not interest itself in managing 
the world, as well as erecting it: without his government everything 
in the world would jostle against one another: the beauty of it would 
be more defaced, it would be an unruly mass, a confused chaos rather 
than a Kéouoz, acomely world. If Divine goodness respected it when 
it was nothing, it would much more respect it when it was something, 
by the sole virtue of his power and good-will to it, without any mo- 
tive from anything else than himself, because there was nothing else 
but himself. But since he sees his own stamp in things without him- 
self in the creature, which is a kind of motive or moving object to 
Divine goodness to preserve it, when there was nothing without him- 
self that could be any motive to Him to create it: as when God 
hath created a creature, and it falls into misery, that misery of the 
creature, though it doth not necessitate his mercy, yet meeting with 
sueh an affection as mercy in his nature, is a moving object to excite 
it; as the repentance of Nineveh drew forth the exercise of his pity 
and preserving goodness. Certainly, since God is good, he is bounti- 
fal; and if bountiful, he is provident. He would seem to envy and 
malign his creatures, if he did not provide for them, while he intends 
to use them: but infinite goodness cannot be effected with envy ; 
for all envy implies a want of that good in ourselves, which we re- 
gard with so evil an eye in another. But God, being infinitely 
blessed, hath not the want of any good that can be a rise to such an 
uncomely disposition. The Jews thought that Divine goodness ex- 
tended only to them in an immediate and particular care, and left 
all other nations and things to the guidance of angels. But the 
Psalmist (Ps. cvii. a psalm calculated for the celebration of this per- 
fection, in the continued course of his providence throughout all 
ages of the world) ascribes to Divine goodness immediately all the 
advantages men meet with. He helps them in their actions, presides 
over their motions, inspects their several conditions, labors day and 
night in a perpetual care of them. The whole life of the world 1s 
linked together by Divine goodness. Everything is ordered by him 
in the place where he hath set it, without which the world would 
be stripped of that excellency it hath by creation. 

1st. his goodness is evident in the care he hath of all creatures. 
There is a peculiar goodness to his people; but this takes not away 


296 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


his general goodness to the world: though a master of a family hath 
a choicer affection to those that have an affinity to him in nature, 
and stand in a nearer relation, as his wife, children, servants; yet 
he hath a regard to his cattle, and other creatures he nourishcth 
in his house. All things are not only before his eyes, but in his 
bosom; he is the nurse of all creatures, supplying their wants, and 
sustaining them from that nothing they tend to. The “earth is 
full of his riches” (Ps. civ 24); not a creek or cranny but partakes 
of it. Abundant goodness daily hovers over it, as well as hatched 
it. The whole world swims in the rich bounty of ihe Creator, as 
the fish doin the largeness of the sea, and birds in the spaciousness 
of the air.» The goodness of God is the river that waters the whole 
earth. As a lifeless picture casts its eye upon every one in the 
room, so doth a living God upon everything in the world. And as 
the sun illuminates all things which are capable of partaking of its 
light, and diffuseth its beams to all things which are capable of re- 
ceiving them, so doth God spread his wings over the whole crea- 
tion, and neglects nothing, wherein he sees a mark of his first 
creating goodness. 

1. His goodness is seen, in preserving all things. ‘ O Lord, thou 
preservest man and beast” (Ps. xxxvi. 6). Not only man, but beasts, 
and beasts as well as men; man, as the most excellent creature, and 
beasts as being serviceable to man, and instruments of his worldly 
happiness. He continues the species of all things, concurs with 
them in their distinct offices, and quickens the womb of nature. 
He visits man every day, and makes him feel the effects of his pro- 
vidence, in giving him ‘fruitful seasons, and filling his heart with 
food and gladness” (Acts xiv. 17), as witnesses of his liberality and 
kindness to man. “The earth is visited and watered by the river 
of God. He settles the furrows of the earth, and makes it soft with 
showers,” that the corn may be nourished in its womb, and spring 
up to maturity. ‘‘He crowns the year with his goodness, and his 
paths drop fatness. The little hills rejoice on every side; the pas- 
tures are clothed with flocks, and the valleys are covered over with 
corn,’ as the Psalmist elegantly says (Ps. lxv. 9, 10; evil. 85, 36). 
He waters the ground by his showers, and preserves the little seed 
from the rapine of animals. “ He draws not out the evil arrows of 
famine,” as the expression is (Ezek. v. 16). Every day shines with 
new beams of his Divine goodness. The vastness of this city, and 
the multitudes of living souls in it, is an astonishing argument. 
What streams of nourishing necessaries are daily conveyed to it! 
Every mouth hath bread to sustain it; and among all the number 
of poor in the bowels and skirts of it, how rare is it to hear of any 
starved to death for want of it! Every day he “spreads a table” 
for us, and that with varieties, and “fills our cups” (Ps. xxii. 5). He 
shortens not his hand, nor withdraws his bounty: the increase of 
one year by his blessing, restores what was spent by the former. 
He is the ‘strength of our life” (Ps. xxvii. 1), continuing the vigor 
of our limbs, and the health of our bodies; secures us from “ terrors 
by night, and the arrows of diseases that fly by day” (Ps. xci. 5); 

4 Gulielmus Parasien. p. 184. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 297 


“sets a hedge about our estates” (Jobi. 10), and defends them against, 
the attempts of violence; preserves our houses from flames that 
might consume them, and our persons from the dangers that lie in 
wait for them; watcheth over us “in our goings out, and our com- 
ings in” (Ps. cxxi. 8), and way-lays a thousand dangers we know 
not of: and employs the most glorious creatures in heaven in the 
service of mean ‘men upon earth” (Ps. xci. 11): not by a faint 
order, but a pressing charge over them, to “ keep them in all his 
ways.” Those that are his immediate servants before his throne, 
he sends to minister to them that were once his rebels. By an 
angel he conducted the affairs of Abraham (Gen. xxiv. 7): and by 
an angel secured the life of Ishmael (Gen. xxi. 17): glorious angels 
for mean man, holy angels for impure man, powerful angels for 
weak man. How in the midst of great dangers, doth his sudden 
light dissipate our great darkness, and create a deliverance out of 
nothing! How often is he found a present help in time of trouble! 
When all other assistance seems to stand at a distance, he flies to us 
beyond our expectations, and raises us up on the sudden from the 
pit of our dejectedness, as well as that of our danger, exceeding our 
wishes, and shooting beyond our desires as well as our deserts. How 
often, in the time of confusion, doth he preserve an indefensible 
place from the attacks of enemies, like a bark in the midst of a tem- 
pestuous sea! the rage falls upon other places round about them, 
and, by a secret efficacy of Divine goodness, is not able to touch 
them. He hath peculiar preservations for his Israel in Egypt, and 
his Lots in Sodom, his Daniels in the lions’ dens, and his children 
in a fiery furnace. He hath a tenderness for all, but a peculiar 
affection to those that are in covenant with him. 

2. ‘The goodness of God is seen in taking care of the animals and 
and inanimate things. Divine goodness embraceth in its arms the 
lowest worm as well as the loftiest cherubim: he provides food for 
the “crying ravens” (Ps. exlvii. 9), and a prey for the appetite of 
the “hungry lion” (Ps. civ. 21): “He opens his hand, and fills 
with good those innumerable creeping things, both small and great 
beasts; they are all waiters upon him, and all are satisfied by their 
bountiful Master” (Ps. civ. 25—28). They are better provided for 
by the hand of heaven, than the best favorite is by an earthly 
prince: for ‘they are filled with good.” He hath made channels 
in the wildest deserts, for the watering of beasts, and trees for the 
nests and ‘habitation of birds” (Ps. civ. 10, 12,17). As a Law- 
giver to the Jews, he took care that the poor beast should not be 
abused by the cruelty of man: he provided for the ease of the 
laboring beast in that command of the Sabbath, wherein he pro- 
vided for his own service: the cattle was to do “no work” on it 
(Hixod. xx, 10). He ordered that the mouth of the ox should not be 
muzzled while it trod out the corn (Deut. xxv. 4, it being the man- 
ner of those countries to separate the corn from the stalk by that 
means, as we do in this by thrashing), regarding it as a part of 
cruelty to deprive the poor beast of tasting, and satisfying itself 
with that which he was so officious by his labor to prepare for the 
use of man. And when any met with a nest of young birds, though 


298 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


they might take the young to their use, they were forbidden to seize 
upon the dam, that she might not lose the objects of her affection 
and her own liberty in one day (Deut. xxii. 6). 

And see how God enforceth this precept with a threatening of a 
shortness of life, if they transgressed 1t (Deut. xxii. 7)! “Thou shalt 
let the dam go, that it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest 
prolong thy days.” He would revenge the cruelty to dumb crea- 
tures with the shortness of the oppressor’s life: nor would he have 
cruelty used to creatures that were separated for his worship: he 
therefore provides that a cow, or an ewe, and their young ones, should 
“not be killed for sacrifice in one day” (Lev. xxii. 28). All which 
precepts, say the Jews, are to teach men mercifulness to their beasts; 
so much doth Divine goodness bow down itself, to take notice of 
those mean creatures, which men have so little regard to, but for 
their own advantage; yea, he is so good, that he would have worship 
declined for a time in favor of a distressed beast; the “ helping a 
sheep, or an ox, or an ass, out of a pit,” was indulged them even 
“on the Sabbath-day,” a day God had peculiarly sanctified and or- 
dered for his service (Matt. xii. 11; Luke xiv. 5): in this case he 
seems to remit for a time the rights of the Deity for the rescue of a 
mere animal. His goodness extends not only to those kind of crea- 
tures that have life, but to the insensible ones; he clothes the grass, 
and ‘arrays the lilies of the field” with a greater glory than Solomon 
had upon his throne (Matt. vi. 28, 29); and such care he had of those 
trees which bore fruit for the maintenance of man or beast, that he 
forbids any injury to be offered to them, and bars the rapine and 
violence, which by soldiers used to be practised (Deut. xx. 19), 
though it were to promote the conquest of their enemy. How much 
goodness is it, that he should think of so small a thing as man! 
How much more that he should concern himself in things that seem 
so petty as beasts and trees! Persons seated in a sovereign throne, 
think it a debasing of their dignity to regard little things: but God, 
who is infinitely greater in majesty above the mightiest potentate, 
and the highest angel, yet is so infinitely good, as to employ his 
divine thoughts about the meanest things. He who possesses the 
‘praises of angels, leaves not off the care of the meanest creatures: 
and that majesty that dwells in a pure heaven, and an inconceivable 
light, stoops to provide for the ease of those creatures that lie and 
lodge in the dirt and dung of the earth. How should we be careful 
not to use those unmercifully, which God takes such care of in his 
law, and not to distrust that goodness, that opens his hand so liber- 
ally to creatures of another rank! 

3. The goodness of God is seen in taking care of the meanest 
rational creatures; as servants and criminals. He provided for the 
liberty of slaves, and would not have their chains continue longer 
than the seventh year, unless they would voluntarily continue under 
the power of their masters; and that upon pain of his displeasure, 
and the withdrawing his blessing (Deut. xv. 18). And though, by 
the laws of many nations, masters had an absolute power of life and 
death over their servants, yet God provided that no member should 
be lamed, not an eye, no, nor a tooth, struck out, but the master was 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 299 


to pay for his folly and fury the price of the “ liberty of his servant” 
(Exod. xxi. 26, 27): he would not suffer the abused servant to be 
any longer under the power of that man that had not humanity to 
use him as one of the same kindred and blood with himself. And 
though those servants might be never so wicked, yet, when unj ustly 
afflicted, God would interest himself as their guardian in their pro- 
tection and delivery. And when a poor slave had been provoked, 
by the severity of his master’s fury, to turn fugitive from him, he 
was, by Divine order, not to be delivered up again to his master’s 
fury, but dwell in that city, and with that person, to whom he had 
“fled for refuge” (Deut. xxiii. 15, 16). And when public justice 
was to be admininistered upon the lesser sort of criminals, the good- 
ness of God ordered the “ number of blows” not to exceed forty, and 
left not the fury of man to measure out the punishment to excess 
(Deut. xxv. 8). ‘And in any just quarrel against a provoking and 
injuring enemy, he ordered them not to ravage with the sword till 
they had summoned a rendition of the place (Deut. xx. 10). And 
as great a care he took of the poor, that they should have the glean- 
ings both of the vineyard and field (Lev. xix. 10; xxiii. 22), and not 
be forced to pay “usury for the money lent them (Exod. xxii. 25). 
4. His goodness is seen in taking care of the wickedest persons. 
“ The earth is full of his goodness” (Ps. xxxvii. 5). The wicked as 
well as the good enjoy it; they that dare lift up their hands against 
heaven in the posture of rebels, as well as those that lift up their 
eyes in the condition of suppliants. To do good to a criminal, far 
surmounts that goodness that flows down upon an innocent object: 
now God is not only good to those that have some degrees of good- 
ness, but to those that have the greatest degrees of wickedness, to 
men that turn his liberality into affronts of him, and have scarce an 
appetite to anything but the violation of his authority and goodness. 
Though, upon the fall of Adam, we have lost the pleasant habitation 
of paradise, and the creatures made for our use are fallen from their 
original excellency and sweetness; yet he hath not left the world 
utterly incommodious for us, but yet stores it with things not only 
for the preservation, but delight of those that make their whole lives 
invectives against this good God. Manna fell from heaven for the 
rebellious as well as for the obedient Israelites. Cain as well as 
Abel, and Esau as well as Jacob, had the influences of his sun, and 
the benefits of his showers. The world is yet a kind of paradise to 
the veriest beasts among mankind; the earth affords its riches, the 
heavens its showers, and the sun its light, to those that injure and 
blaspheme him: “He makes his sun to rise on the evil and on the 
good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matt. v.45). The 
wickedest breathe in his air, walk upon his earth, and drink of his 
water, as well as the best. The sun looks with as pleasant and bright 
an eye upon a rebellious Absalom, as a righteous David; the earth | 
yields its plants and medicines to one as well as to the other ; it is sel- 
dom that He deprives any of the faculties of their souls, or any mem- 
bers of their bodies. God distributes his blessings where he might 
shoot his thunders; and darts his light on those who deserve an 
eternal darkness; and presents the good things of the earth to those 


300 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


* 

that merit the miseries of hell; for “‘ the earth, and the fulness there- 
of, is the Lord’s” (Ps. xxiv. 1); everything in it is his in propriety, 
ours in trust; it is his corn, his wine (Hos. ii. 8); he never divested 
himself of the propriety, though he grants us the use; and by those 
good thines he supports multitudes of wicked men, not one or two, 
but the whole shoal of them in the world; for he is “ the Saviour of 
all men,” 2. e. is the preserver of all men (1 Tim. iv. 10). And as 
he created them, when he foresaw they would be wicked; so he pro- 
vides for them, when he beholds them in their ungodliness. The 
ingratitude of men stops not the current of his bounty, nor tires his 
liberal hand; howsoever unprofitable and injurious men are to him, 
he is liberal to them; and his goodness is the more admirable, by 
how much the more the unthankfulness of men is provoking: he 
sometimes affords to the worst a greater portion of these earthly 
goods; they often swim in wealth, when others pine away their lives 
in poverty. And the silk-worm yields its bowels to make purple 
for tyrants, while the oppressed scarce have from the sheep wool 
enough to cover their nakedness; and though he furnish men with 
those good things, upon no other account than what princes do, 
when they nourish criminals in a prison till the time of their execu- 
tion, it is a mark of his goodness. Is it not the kindness of a prince 
to treat his rebels deliciously? to give them the liberty of the prison, 
and the enjoyments of the delights of the place, rather than to load 
their legs with fetters, and lodge them in a dark and loathsome dun- 
geon, fill he orders them, for their crime, to be conducted to the scaffold 
or gibbet? Since God is thus kind to the vilest men, whose mean- 
ness, by reason of sin, is beyond that of any other creature, as to 
shoot such rays of goodness upon them; how inexpressible would be 
the expressions of his goodness, if the Divine image were as pure 
and bright upon them as it was upon innocent Adam! 

9d. His goodness is evident in the preservation of human society. 
It belongs to his power that he is able to do it, but to his goodness 
that he is willing to do it. 

1. This goodness appears in prescribing rules for it. The moral law 
consists but of ten precepts, and there are more of them ordered for 
the support of human society, than for the adoration and honor of 
himself (Exod. xx. 1, 2); four for the rights of God, and six for the 
rights of man, and his security in his authority, relations, life, goods, 
and reputation ; superiors not to be dishonored, life not to be invaded, 
chastity not to be stained, goods not to be filched, good name not to be 
cracked by false witness, nor anything belonging to our neighbor to 
be coveted; and in the whole Scripture, not only that which was 
calculated for the Jews, but compiled for the whole world; he hath 
fixed rules for the ordering all relations, magistrates, and subjects; 
parents and children; husbands and wives; masters and servants; 
rich and poor, find their distinct qualifications and duties. There 
would be a paradisiacal state, if men had a goodness to observe what 
God hath had a goodness to order for the strengthening the sinews of 
human society; the world would not groan under oppressing tyrants, 
nor princes tremble under discontented subjects, or mighty rebels; 
children would not be provoked to anger by the unreasonableness 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GoD. 301 


of their parents, nor parents sink under grief by the rebellion of their 
children ; masters would not tyrannize over the meanest of their ser- 
vants, nor servants invade the authority of their masters. 

2. The goodness of God in the preserving human society, is seen 
in setting a magistracy to preserve it. Magistracy is from God in 
its original; the charter was drawn up in paradise; civil subordina- 
tion must have been had man remained in innocence; but the charter 
was more explicitly renewed and enlarged at the restoration of the 
world after the deluge, and given out to man under the broad seal 
of heaven; ‘“ Whoso sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be 
shed” (Gen. ix. 6). The command of shedding the blood of a mur- 
derer was a part of his goodness, to secure the lives of those that 
bore his image. Magistrates are “the shields of the earth,” but 
they “belong to God” (Ps. xlvii. 9). They are fruits of his good- 
ness in their original, and authority; were there no magistracy, there 
would be government, no security to any man under his own vine 
and fig tree;.the world would be a den of wild beasts preying upon 
one another; every one would do what seems good in his eyes; the 
loss of government is a judgment God brings upon a nation when 
men become “as the fishes of the sea,” to devour one another, be- 
cause they “have no ruler over them” (Hab. i. 14). Private dissen- 
sions will break out into public disorders and combustions, 

3. ‘The goodness of God in the preservation of human society, is 
seen in the restraints of the passions of men. He sets bounds to the 
passions of men as well as to the rollings of the sea; “He stilleth 
the noise of the waves, and the tumults of the people” (Baw lsews 2). 
Though God hath erected a magistracy to stop the breaking out of 
those floods of licentiousness, which swell in the hearts of men; yet, 
if God should not hold stiff reins on the necks of those tumultuous 
and foaming passions, the world would be a place of unruly confusion, 
and hell triumph upon earth; a crazy state would be quickly broke in 
pieces by boisterous nature. The tumults of a people could no more 
be quelled by the force of man, than the rage of the sea by a puff 
of breath ; without Divine goodness, neither the wisdom nor watch- 
fulness of the magistrates, nor the industry of officers, could preserve 
a state. The laws of men would be too slight to curb the lusts of 
men, if the goodness of God did not restrain them by a secret hand, 
and interweave their temporal security with observance of those 
laws. The sons of Belial did murmur when Saul was chosen king ; 
and that they did no more was the goodness of God, for the preser- 
vation of human society. If God did not restrain the impetuousness 
of men’s lusts, they would be the entire ruin of human society ; their 
lusts would render them as bad as beasts, and change the world into 
a savage wilderness. 

4. ‘The goodness of God is seen in the preservation of human so- 
ciety, in giving various inclinations to men for public advantage. If 
all men had an inclination to one science or art, they would all stand 
idle spectators of one another; but God hath bestowed various dis- 
positions and gifts upon men, for the promoting the common good, 
that they may not only be useful to themselves, but to society. He 


302 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


will have none idle, none unuseful, but every one acting in a due 
place, according to their measures, for the good of others. 

5. The goodness of God is seen in the witness he bears against 
those sins that disturb human society. In those cases he is pleased 
to interest himself in a more signal manner, to cool those that make 
++ their business to overturn the order he hath established for the 
good of the earth. He doth not so often in this world punish those 
faults committed immediately against his own honor, as those that 
put the world into a hurry and confusion: as a good governor is 
more merciful to crimes against himself, than those against his com- 
munity. It is observed that the most turbulent seditious persons in 
a state come to most violent ends, as Corah, Adonijab, Zimni : 
Ahithopel draws Absalom’s sword against David and Israel, and the 
next is, he twists a halter for himself: Absalom heads a party against 
his father, and God, by a goodness to Israel, hangs him up, and pre- 
vents not its safety by David’s indulgence, and a future rebeilion, had 
life been spared by the fondness of his father. His providence is 
more evident in discovering disturbers, and the causes that move 
them, in defeating their enterprises, and digging the contrivers out 
of their caverns and lurking holes: in such cases, God doth so act, 
and use such methods, that he silenceth any creature from challeng- 
ing any partnership with him in the discovery. He doth more se- 
verely in this world correct those actions that unlink the mutual as- 
sistance between man and man, and the charitable and kind corre- 
spondence he would have kept up. The sins for which the “ wrath 
of God comes upon the children of disobedience” (Col. ui. 5, 6) m 
this world are of this sort; and when princes will be oppressing the 
people, God will be “ pouring contempt on the princes, and set the 
poor on high from affliction” (Ps. cvii. 40, 41). An evidence of 
God’s care and kindness in the preserving human society, is those 
strange discoveries of murders, though never so clandestine and 
subtilly committed, more than of any other crime among men: 
Divine care never appears more than in bringing those hidden and 
injurious works of darkness to light, and a due punishment. 

6. His goodness is seen in ordering mutual offices to one another 
against the current of men’s passions. Upon this account he ordered, 
in his laws for the government of the Israelites, that a man should 
reduce the wandering beast of his enemy to the hand of his right- 
ful proprietor, though he were a provoking enemy ; and also ‘help 
the poor beast that belonged to one that hated him, when he saw him 
sink under his burden” (Exod. xxiii. 4, 5). When mutual assistance 
was necessary, he would not have men considered as enemies, OF 
considered as wicked, but as of the same blood with ourselves, that 
we might be serviceable to one another for the preservation of life 
and goods. 

7. His goodness is seen in remitting something of his own right, 
for the preserving a due dependence and subjection. He declines 
the right he had to the vows of a minor, or one under tie power of 
another, waving what he might challenge by the voluntary obliga- 
tion of his creature, to keep up the due order between parents and 
children, husbands and wives, superiors and inferiors ; those that 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 3038 


were under the power of another, as a child under his parents, or a 
wife under her husband, if they had ‘“ vowed a vow unto the Lord,” 
which concerned his honor and worship, it was void without the ap- 
probation of that person under whose charge they were (Num. xxx. 
3, 4, &e.), Though God was the Lord of every man’s goods, and 
men but his stewards; and though he might have taken to himself 
what another had offered by a vow, since whatsoever could be 
offered was God’s own, though it was not the parties’ own who 
offered it; yet God would not have himself adored by his creature 
to the prejudice of the necessary ties of human society ; he lays 
aside what he might challenge by his sovereign dominion, that there 
might not be any breach of that regular order which was necessary 
for the preseryation of the world. If Divine goodness did not thus 
order things, he would not do the part of a Rector of the world ; 
the beauty of the world would be much defaced, it would be a con- 
fused mass of men and women, or rather, beasts and bedlams, Order 
renders every city, every nation, yea, the whole earth, beautiful: 
this is an effect of Divine goodness. 

dd. His goodness is evident in encouraging anything of moral good- 
ness in the world. Though moral goodness cannot claim an eternal 
reward, yet it hath been many times rewarded with a temporal hap- 
piness; he hath often siganlly rewarded acts of honesty, justice, 
and fidelity, and punished the contrary by his judgments, to deter 
man from such an unworthy practice, and encourage others to what 
was comely, and of a general good report in the world. Ahab’s 
humiliation put a demurrer to God’s judgments intended against 
him; and some ascribe the great victories and success of the Romans 
to that justice which was observed among themselves. Baruch was 
but an amanuensis to the Prophet Jeremy to write his prophecy, and 
very despondent of his own welfare (Jer. xlv. 18); God upon that 
account provides for his safety, and rewards the industry of his ser- 
vice with the security of his person; he was not a statesman, to de- 
clare against the corrupt counsels of them that sat at the helm, nor 
a prophet, to declare against their profane practices, but the prophet’s © 
scribe ; and as he writes in God’s service the prophecies revealed to 
the prophet, God writes his name in the roll of those that were de- 
signed for preservation in that deluge of judgments which were to 
come upon that nation. Epicurus complained of the administration 
of God, that the virtuous moralist had not sufficient smiles of Divine 
favor, nor the swinish sensualist frowns of Divine indignation. But 
what if they have not always that confluence of outward wealth and 
pleasures, but remain in the common level? yet they have the hap- 
piness and satisfaction of a clear reputation, the esteem of men, and 
the secret applauses of their very enemies, besides the inward ravish- 
ments upon an exercise of virtue, and the commendatory subscrip- 
tion of their own hearts, a dainty the vicious man knows not of ; 
they have an inward applause from God as a reward of Divine 
goodness, instead of those racks of conscience upon which the pro- 
fane are sometimes stretched. He will not let the worst men do him 
any service (though they never intended in the act of service him, 
but themselves) without giving them their wages: he will not let 


304 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


them hit him in the teeth as if he were beholden to them. If Nebu- 
chadnezzar be the instrument of God’s judgments against Tyrus and 
Israel, he will not only give him that rich city, buta richer country, 
Egypt, the granary for her neighbors, a wages above his work. In 
this is Divine goodness eminent, since, in the most moral actions, as 
there is something beautiful, so there is something mixed, hateful to 
the infinitely exact holiness of the Divine nature; yet he will not 
let that which is pleasing to him go unrewarded, and defeat the ex- 
pectations of men, as men do with those they employ, when, for one 
flaw in an action, they deny them the reward due for the other part. 
God encouraged and kept up morality in the cities of the Gentiles 
for the entertainment of a further goodness in the doctrine of the 
gospel when it should be published among them. . 

4th. Divine goodness is eminent in providing a Scripture as a rule 
to guide us, and continuing it in the world. If man be a rational 
- creature, governable by a law, can it be imagined there should be no 
revelation of that law to him? Man, by the light of reason, must 
needs confess himself to be in another condition than he was by cre- 
ation, when he came first out of the hands of God; and can it be 
thought, that God should keep up the world under so many sins 
against the light of nature, and bestow so many providential influ- 
ences, to invite men to return to him, and acquaint no men in the 
world with the means of that return? Would he exact an_obedi- 
ence of men, as their consciences witness he doth, and furnish them 
with no rules to guide them in the darkness they cannot but acknowl- 
edge that they have contracted? No; Divine goodness hath other- 
wise provided: this Bible we have is his word and rule. Had it 
been a falsity and imposture, would that goodness, that watches over 
the world, have continued it solong? That goodness that overthrew 
the burdensome rites of Moses, and expelled the foolish idolatry of 
the Pagans, would have discovered the imposture of this, had it not 
been a transcript of his own will. Whatever mistakes he suffers to 
_remain in the world, what goodness had there been to suffer this an- 
ciently amongst the Jews, and afterwards to open it to the whole 
world, to abuse men in religion and worship, which so nearly con- 
cerned himself and his own honor, that the world should be deceived 
by the devil without a remedy in the morning of its appearance ? 
Ti hath been honored and admired by some heathens, when they 
have cast their eyes upon it, and their natural light made them be- 
hold some footsteps of a Divinity in it. If this, therefore, be not a 
Divine prescript, let any that deny it, bring as good arguments for 
any book else, as can be brought for this. Now, the publishing this 
is an argument of Divine goodness: it is designed to win the affec- 
tions of beggarly man, to be espoused to a God of eternal blessed- 
ness and immense riches. It speaks words in season: no doubts but 
it resolves; no spiritual distemper but it cures; no condition but it 
hath a comfort to suitit. It is a garden which the hand of Divine 
bounty hath planted for us ; in it he condescends to shadow himself 
in those expressions that render him in sore manner intelligible to 
us. Had God wrote in a loftiness of style suitable to the greatness 
_ of his majesty, his writing had been as little understood by us, as the 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 305 


brightness of his glory can be beheld by us. But he draws phrases 
from our affairs, to express his mind to us; he incarnates himself in 
his word to our minds, before his Son was incarnate in the flesh to 
the eyes of men: he ascribes to himself eyes, ears, hands, that we 
might have, from the consideration of ourselves, and the whole hu- 
man nature, a conception of his perfections: he assumes to himself 
the members of our bodies, to direct our understandings in the knowl- 
edge of his Deity; this is his goodness. Again, though the Scrip- 
ture was written upon several occasions, yet in the dictating of it, 
the goodness of God cast his eye upon the last ages of the world 
(1 Cor. x. 11): “They are written for our admonition, upon whom 
the ends of the world are come.” It was given to the Israelites, but 
Divine goodness intended it for the future Gentiles. The old writ- 
ings of the prophets were thus designed, much more the later writ- 
mgs of the apostles. Thus did Divine goodness think of us, and 
prepare his records for us, before we were in the world: these he 
hath written plain for our instruction, and wrapped up in them what 
is necessary for our salvation: it is clear to inform our understand- 
ing, and rich to comfort us in our misery; it is a light to guide us, 
and a cordial to refresh us; it is a lamp to our feet, and a medicine 
for our diseases; a purifier of our filth, and a restorer of us in our 
faintings. He hath by his goodness sealed the truth of it, by his 
efficacy on multitudes of men: he hath made it the “word of regen- 
eration” (Jamesi. 18). Men, wilder and more monstrous than beasts, 
have been tamed and changed by the power of it: it hath raised 
multitudes of dead men from a grave fuller of horror than any earthly 
one. Again, Goodness was in all ages sending his letters of advice 
and counsel from heaven, till the canon of the Scripture was closed ; 
sometimes he wrote to chide a froward people, sometimes to cheer 
up an oppressed and disconsolate people, according to the state 
wherein they were; as we may observe by the several seasons 
wherein parts of Scripture were written. It was His goodness that 
he first revealed anything of his will after the fall; it was a further 
degree of goodness, that he would add more cubits to its stature ; be- 
fore he would lay aside his pencil, it grew up to that bull wherein 
we have it. And his goodness is further seen in the preserving it ; 
he hath triumphed over the powers that opposed it, and showed him- 
self good to the instruments that propagated it: he hath maintained 
it against the blasts of hell, and spread it in all languages against 
the obstructions of men and devils. The sun of his word is by his 
kindness preserved in our horizon, as well as the sun in the heavens. 
How admirable is Divine goodness! He hath sent his Son to die for 
us, and his written word to instruct us, and his Spirit to edge it for 
an entrance into our souls: he hath opened the womb of the earth 
to nourish us, and sent down the records of heayen to direct us in 
our pilgrimage: he hath provided the earth for our habitation, while 
we are travellers, and sent his word to acquaint us with a felicity at 
the end of our journey, and the way to attain in another world what 
we want in this, vz. a happy immortality. 

Sth. His goodness in his government is evident, in conversions of 


men. ‘Though this work be wrought by his power, yet his power 
VOL. 11.—20 


306 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


was first solicited by his goodness. It was his rich goodness that he 
would employ his power to pierce the scales of a heart as hard as 
those of the “leviathan.” It was this that opened the ears of men 
to hear him, and draws them from the hurry of worldly cares, and 
the charms of sensual pleasures, and, which is the top of all, the im- 
postures and cheats of their own hearts. It is this that sends a spark 
of his wrath into men’s consciences, to put them to a stand in sin, 
that he might not send down a shower of brimstone eternally to con- 
sume their persons. This it was that first showed you the excellence 
of the Redeemer, and brought you to taste the sweetness of his poe 
and find your security in the agonies of his death. It is his good- 
ness to call one man and not another, to turn Paul in his course, and 
lay hold of no other of his companions. It is his goodness to call 
any, when he is not bound to eall one. 

1. It is his goodness to pitch upon mean and despicable men in 
the eye of the world; to call this poor publican, and overlook that 
proud Pharisee, this man that sits upon a dunghill, and neglect him 
that glisters in his purple. His majesty is not enticed by the lofty 
titles of men, nor, which is more worth, by the learning and knowl- 
edge of men. ‘“ Not many wise, not many mighty,” not many doc- 
tors, not many lords, though some of them; but his goodness con- 
descends to the “base things” of the world, and things which are 
“despised” (1 Cor. i. 26-28). " The poor receive the gospel” (Matt. 
xi. 5), when those that are more acute, and furnished with a more 
apprehensive reason, are not touched by it. 

5 The worst men. He seizeth sometimes upon men most soiled, 
and neglects others that seem more clean and less polluted. He turns 
men in their course in sin, that, by their infernal practices, have 
seemed to have gone to school to hell, and to have sucked in the sole 
instructions of the devil. He lays hold upon some when they are 
most under actual demerit, and snatches them as fire-brands out of 
the fire, as upon Paul when fullest of rage against him ; and shoots 
a beam of grace, where nothing could be justly expected but a thun- 
derbolt of wrath. It is his goodness to visit any, when they le pu- 
trefying in their loathsome lusts; to draw near to them who have 
been guilty of the greatest contempt of God, and the light of nature ; 
the murdering Manassehs, the persecuting Sauls, the Christ-crucify- 
ing Jews,—persons in whom lusts had had a peaceable possession 
and empire for many years. 

3. His goodness appears in converting men possessed. with the 
greatest enmity against him, while he was dealing with them. <All 
were in such a state, and framing contrivances against him, when 
Divine goodness knocked at the door (Col. 1. 21). He looked after 
us when our backs were turned upon him, and sought us when we 
slighted him, and were a “ gainsaying people” (Rom. x. 21); when we 
had shaken off his convictions, and contended with our Maker, and 
mustered up the powers of nature against the alarms of conscience ; 
struggled like wild bulls in a net, and blunted those darts that stuck 
in our souls. Nota man that is turned to him, but had lifted up 
the heel against his gospel grace, as well as made light of his creating 
goodness. Yet it hath employed itself about such ungrateful 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 307 


wretches, to polish those knotty and rugged pieces for heaven; and 
so invincibly, that he would not have his goodness defeated by the 
fierceness and rebellion of the flesh. Though the thing was more 
difficult in itself (if anything may be said to have a difficulty to 
omnipotency) than to make a stone live, or to turn a straw into a 
marble pillar. The malice of the flesh makes a man more unfit for 
the one, than the nature of the straw unfits it for the other. 

4. His goodness appears in turning men, when they were pleased 
with their own misery, and unable to deliver themselves; when they 
preferred a hell before him, and were in love with their own vileness ; 
when his call was our torment, and his neglect of us had been ac- 
counted our felicity. Was it not a mighty goodness to keep the 
hight close to our eyes, when we endeavored to blow it out; and the 
corrosive near to our hearts, when we endeavored to tear it off, being 
more fond of our disease than the remedy? We should have been 
scalded to death with the Sodomite, had not God laid his good hand 
upon us, and drawn us from the approaching ruin we affected, and 
were loath to be freed from. And had we been displeased with our 
state, yet we had been as unable spiritually to raise ourselves 
from sin to grace, as to raise ourselves naturally from nothing to be- 
ing. In this state we were when his goodness triumphed over us; 
when he put a hook into our nostrils, to turn us in order to our sal- 
vation; and drew us out of the pit which we had digged, when he 
might have left us to sink under the rigors of his justice we had 
merited. Now this goodness in conversion is greater than that in 
creation; as in creation there is nothing to oppose him, so there was 
nothing to disoblige him; creation was terminated to the good of a 
mutable nature, and conversion tends to a supernatural good. God 
pronounced all creatures good at first, and man among the rest, but 
did not pronounce any of them, or man himself, his “portion,” his 
“inheritance,” his “ segullah,” his “house,” his “diadem.” He 
speaks slightly of all those things which he made, the noblest 
heavens, as well as the lowest earth, in comparison of a true con- 
vert: “ All those things hath mine hand made, and all those things 
have been: but to this man will I look, to him that is of a contrite 
spirit” (Isa. Ixvi. 1, 2). It is more goodness to give the espousing 
grace of the covenant, than the completing glory of heaven; as it is 
more for a prince to marry a beggar, than only to bring her to live 
deliciously in his courts. All other benefits are of a meaner strain, 
if compared with this; there is little less of goodness in imparting 
the holiness of his nature, than imputing the righteousness of his 
Son. 

6th. ‘The Divine goodness doth appear in answering prayers. He 
delights to be familiarly acquainted with his people, and to hear 
them call upon him. He indulgeth them a free access to him, and 
delights in every address of an “upright man” (Prov. xv. 8). The 
wonderful efficacy of prayer depends not upon the nature of our pe- 
titions or the temper of our soul, but the goodness of God to whom 
we address. Christ establisheth it upon this bottom: when he ex- 
horts to ask in his name, he tells them the spring of all their grants 
is the Father’s love: “T say not, I will pray the Father for you, for 


308 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


the Father himself loves you” (John xvi. 26, 27). And since it 1s 
of itself incredible, that a Majesty, exalted above the cherubims, 
should stoop so low as to give a miserable and rebellious creature 
admittance to him, and afford him a gracious hearing, and a quick 
supply, Christ ushers in the promise of answering prayer with a note 
of great assurance: ‘(I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you” 
(Luke xi. 9, 10). I, that know the mind of my Father, and his good 
disposition, assure you your prayer shall not be in vain. Perhaps 
you will not be so ready of yourselves to imagine so great a liber- 
ality; but take it upon my word, it is true, and so you will find it. 
And his bounty travels, as it were, in birth, to give the greatest 
blessings, upon our asking, rather than the smallest : “ your heavenly 
Father shall give his Holy Spirit to them that ask him” (ver. 18): 
which in Matt. vii. 11, is called, ‘good things.” Of all the good 
and rich things Divine goodness hath in his treasury, he delights to 
give the best upon asking, because God doth act so as to manifest 
the greatness of his bounty and magnificence to men ; and, therefore, 
is delighted when men, by their petitioning him, own such a liberal 
disposition in him, and put him upon the manifesting it. He would 
rather you should ask the greatest things heaven can afford, tham 
the trifles of this world; because his bounty is not discovered in 
meaner gifts: he loves to have an opportunity to manifest his affec. 
tion above the liberality and tenderness of worldly fathers. He doth 
more wait to give in a way of grace, than we to beg; and, ‘‘ there- 
fore, will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you” (Isa. xxx- 
18). He stands expecting your suits, and employs his wisdom in 
pitching upon the, fittest seasons, when the manifestation of his 
goodness may be most gracious in itself, and the ey you want 
most welcome to you; as it follows, “for the Lord is a‘ od of judg- 
ment.” He chooseth the time wherein his doles may be most ac- 
ceptable to his suppliants; ‘In an acceptable time have I heard. 
thee” (Isa. xlix. 8). He often opens his hand while we are opening 
our lips, and his blessings meet our petitions at the first setting out 
upon their journey to heaven: ‘‘ While they are yet speaking, I will 
hear” (Isa. lxy. 24). How often do we hear a secret voice within us, 
while we are praying, saying, “ Your prayer is granted ;” as well as 
hear a voice behind us, while we are erring, saying, “ This is the 
way, walk in it!” And his liberality exceeds often our desires, as 
well as our deserts; and gives out more than we had the wisdom or 
confidence to ask. The apostle intimates it in that doxology, “ Unto 
Him who is able to do abundantly above all that we ask or think” 
(ph. iii. 20). This power would not have been so strong an argu- 
ment of comfort, if it were never put in practice; he is more hberal 
than his creatures are craving. Abraham petitioned for the life of 
Ishmael, and God promiseth him the “ birth of Tgaac” (Gen. xvii. 18, 
19). Isaac asks for a “child,” and God gives him ‘‘two” (Gen. xxv. 
91, 22). Jacob desires “food” to eat, and “raiment” to put on; 
God confines not his bounty within the narrow limits of his petition, 
but instead of a “staff” wherewith he passed Jordan, makes him re- 
pass it with “two bands” (Gen. xxvii. 20). David asked life of God, 
and he gave him “life,” and a “crown” to boot (Ps. xxi. 2—5). The 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 809 


Israelites would have been contented with a free life in Egypt; they 
only cried to have their chains struck off; God gave them that, and 
adopts them to be his “peculiar people,” and raises them into a fa- 
mous state. It isa wonder that God should condescend so much, 
that he should hear prayers so weak, so cold, so wandering, and 
gather up our sincere petitions from the dung of our distractions and 
diffidence. David vents his astonishment at it; ‘Blessed be God, 
for he hath shown me marvellous kindness. I said in my haste, lam 
cut off from before thine eyes: nevertheless, thou heardest the voice 
of my supplication” (Ps. xxxi 21, 22). How do we wonder at the 
goodness of a petty man, in granting our desires; how much more 
should we at the humility and goodness of the most sovereign 
Majesty of heaven and earth! 

7th. The goodness of God is seen in bearing with the infirmities 
of his people, and accepting imperfect obedience. Though Asa had 
many blots in his escuttheon, yet they are overlooked, and this note 
set upon record by Divine goodness, that his heart was perfeet to- 
wards the Lord all his days; “But the high places were not re- 
moved: nevertheless, Asa’s heart was perfect with the Lord all his 
days” (1 Kings, xv. 14). He takes notice of a sincere, though 
chequered obedience, to reward it, which could claim nothing but a 
slight from him, if he were extreme to mark what is done amiss. 
When there is not an opportunity to work, but only to will, he ae- 
cepts the will, as if it had passed into work and act. He sees no in- 
iquity in Jacob (Numb. xxiii. 21), 7 He sees it not so as to cast 
off a respect to their persons, and the acceptance of their services: 
his omniscience knows their sins, but his goodness doth not reject 
their persons. He is of so good a disposition, that he delights in a 
weak obedience of his servants, not in the imperfection, but in the 
obedience (Pg. xxxvii. 23); “He delights in the way of a good 
man,” though he sometimes slips in it: he accepts a poor man’s 
pigeon, as well as a rich man’s ox: he hath a bottle for the tears, 
and a book for the “services of the upright,” as well as for the most 
perfect obedience of angels (Ps. lvi. 8): he preserves their tears, as 
if they were a rich and generous wine, as the vine-dresser doth the 
expressions of the grape. 

Sth. The goodness of God is seen in afflictions and persecutions 
If it be “good for us to be afflicted,” for which we have the psalm- 
ist’s vote (Ps. exix. el then goodness in God is the principal cause 
and orderer of the afflictions. It is his goodness to snatch away 
that whence we fetch supports for our security, and encouragements 
for our insolence against him: he takes away the thing which we 
have some value for, but such as his infinite wisdom sees inconsist- 
ent with our true happiness. It is no ill-will in the physician to 
take away the hurtful matter the patient loves, and prescribe bitter 
potions, to advance that health which the other impaired ; nor any 
mark of unkindness in a friend, to wrest a sword out of a madman’s 
hand, wherewith he was about to stab himself, though it were beset 
with the most orient pearls. To prevent what is evil, is to do us the 
greatest good. It is a kindness to prevent a man from falling down 
a precipice, though it be with a violent blow, that lays him flat upon 


810 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


the ground at some distance from the edge of it. By afflictions he 
often snaps asunder those chains which fettered us, and quells those 
passions which ravaged us: he sharpens our faith, and quickens our 

rayers; he brings us in the secret chamber of our own heart, which 
we had little mind before to visit by a self-examination. It is such 
a goodness that he will vouchsafe to correct man in order to his 
eternal happiness, that Job makes it one part of his astonishment 
(Job. vii. 17); “ What is man, that thou shouldest magnify him? 
that thou shouldest set thy heart upon him? and that thou shouldest 
visit him every morning, and try him every moment?” His strokes 
are often the magnifyings and exaltings of man. He sets his heart 
upon man, while he inflicts the smart of his rod: he shows thereby, 
what a high account he makes of him, and what a special affection 
he bears to him. When he might treat us with more severity after 
the breach of his covenant, and make his jealousy flame out against 
us in furious methods, he will not destroy *his relation to us, and 
leave us to our own inclinations, but deal with us as a father with 
his children; and.when he takes this course with us, it is when it 
cannot be avoided without our ruin: his goodness would not sufier 
him to do it, if our badness did not force him to it Jer. ix. 7), “I 
will melt them and try them, for how shall I do for the daughter of 
my people?” What other course can I take but this, according to 
the nature of man? The goldsmith hath no other way to separate 
the dross from the metal, but by melting it down. And when the 
impurities of his people necessitate him to this proceeding, “he sits 
as a refiner” (Mal. iii. 8): he watches for the purifying the silver, 
not for his own profit as the goldsmith, but out of a care of them, 
and good will to them; as himself speaks (Isa. xlvin. 10), “I have 
refined thee, but not with silver ;” or, as some read it, ‘not for sil- 
ver.” As when he scatters his people abroad for their sin, he will 
not leave them without his presence for their “sanctuary” (Hzek. xi. 
16): he would by his presence with them supply the place of ordi- 
nances, or be an ark to them in the midst of the deluge: his hand 
that struck them, is never without a goodness to comfort them and 
pity them. When Jacob was to go into Egypt, which was to prove 
a furnace of affliction to his offspring, God promises to go down with 
him, and to “ bring him up again” (Gen. xlvi. 4): a promise not only 
made to Jacob in his person, but to Jacob in his posterity. He re- 
turned not out of Egypt in his person, but as the father of a nu- 
merous posterity. He that would go down with their root, and 
afterwards bring up the branches, was certainly with them in all 
their oppressions: “I will go down with thee.” ‘“ Down,” saith 
one; what a word is that for a Deity ! into Kgypt, idolatrous Egypt, 
what a place is that for his holiness!i Yet O, the goodness of God! 
He never thinks himself low enough to do his people good, nor any 
place too bad for his society with them. So when he had sent away 
into captivity the people of Israel by the hand of the Assyrian, his 
bowels yearn after them in their affliction (Isa. In. 4, 5); the Assy- 
rian “ oppressed them without cause,” 2. ¢. without a just cause in the 
conqueror to inflict so great an evil upon them, but not without 

1 Harwood’s Sermon at Oxford, p. 5. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 311 


cause from God, whom they had'provoked. “‘ Now, therefore, what 
have I here, saith the Lord?” What do I here? I will not stay 
behind them. What do I longer here? for I will redeem again 
those jewels the enemy hath carried away. That chapter is a pro- 
phecy of redemption: God shows himself so good to his people in 
their persecutions, that he gives them occasion to glorify him in the 
very fires, as the Divine order is (Isa. xxiv. 15), “ Wherefore glorify 
the Lord in the fires.” 

9th. The goodness of God is seen in temptations. In those he 
takes occasion to show his care and’ watchfulness, as a father uses 
the distress of a child as an opportunity for manifesting the tender- 
ness of his affection. God is at the beginning and end of every 
temptation ; he measures out both the quality and quantity: he ex- 
poseth them not to temptation beyond the ability he had already 
granted them, or will at the time, or afterwards multiply in them. 
He hath promised his people that “the gate of hell shail not prevail 
against them” (1 Cor. x. 18): that “in all things” they shall be 
‘Cmore than conquerors through Him that loved them:” that the 
most raging malice of hell shall not wrest them out of his hands. 
His goodness is not less in performing than it was in promising: 
and as the care of his providence extends to the least as well as the 
greatest, so the watchfulness of his goodness extends to us in the 
least as well as in the greatest temptations. 

1. The goodness of God appears in shortening temptations. None 
of them can go beyond their “appointed times” (Dan. xi. 85): the 
strong blast Satan breathes cannot blow, nor the waves he raises 
rage one minute beyond the time God allows them; when they have 
done their work, and come to the period of their time, God speaks 
the word, and the wind and sea of hell must obey him, and retire 
into their dens. The more violent temptations are, the shorter time 
doth God allot to them. The assaults Christ had at the time of his 
death were of the most pressing and urging nature: the powers of 
darkness were all in arms against him; the reproaches and scorns 
put upon him, questioning his sonship, were very sharp; yet a little 
before his suffering he calls it but an hour (Luke xxii. 53), “This is 
your hour, and the power of darkness.” A short time that men and 
devils were combined against him; and the time of temptation that 
is to come upon all the world for their trial, is called but an ‘“ hour” 
(Rev. iii. 10). In all such attempts, the greatness of the rage is a 
eertain prognostic of the shortness of the season (Rev. xu. 12). 

2. The goodness of God appears in strengthening his geople un- 
der temptations. If he doth not restrain the arm of Satan from 
striking, he gives us a sword to manage the combat, and a shield to 
bear off the blow (Eph. vi. 16,17). If he obscures his goodness in 
one part, he clears and brightens 1t in another: he either binds the 
strong man that he shall not stir, or gives us armor to render us 
victorious. If we fall, it is not for want of provision from him, but 
for want of our “putting on the armor of God” (Eph. vi. 11, 18). 
When we have not a strength by nature, he gives it us by grace: he 
often quells those passions within which would join hands with, and 
second the temptation without. He either qualifies the temptation 


S12 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


suitably to the force we have, or else supplies us with i new streneth 
to mate the temptation he intends to let loose against us; he knows 
we are but dust, and his goodness will not have us uneyually match- 
ed. ‘The Jews that in Antiochus’ time were under great temptation 
to apostasy by reason of the violence of their persecutions, were, 
“out of weakness, made strong” for the combat (Heb. xi. 34). ‘The 
Spirit came more strongly upon Sampson when the Philistines most 
furiously and confidently assaulted him. His Spirit is sent to 
strengthen his people before the devil is permitted to tempt them 
(Matt. iv. 2); ‘Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit.” Then ; When? 
When the Spirit had in an extraordinary manner descended upon 
him (Matt. in. 16), “then,” and not before. As the angels appeared 
to Christ, after his temptation, to minister to him, so they appeared 
to him before his passion, the time of the strongest powers of dark- 
ness, to strengthen him for it: he is so good, that when he knows 
‘our potsherd strength too weak, he furnisheth our recruits from his 
own omnipotence (Eph. vi. 10); ‘ Be strong in the Lord, and in the 
power of his might.” He doth, as it were, breathe in something of 
his own almightiness, to assist us in our wrestling against principal- 
ities and powers, and make us capable to sustain the violent storms 
of the enemies. 

3. The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in giving great 
comforts in or after them. ‘The Israelites had a more immediate 
provision of manna from heaven when they were in the wilderness. 
We read not that the Father spake audibly to the Son, and gave him 
so loud a testimony, that he was his “beloved Son, in whom he was 
well pleased,” till he was upon the brink of strong temptations 
(Matt. 11. 17): nor sent angels to minister immediately to his per- 
son, till after his success (Matt. iv. 11). Job never had such evi- 
dences of Divine love till after he had felt the sharp strokes of Sa- 
tan’s malice; he had heard of God before, by the “hearing of the 
ear,” but afterwards is admitted into greater familiarity (Job. xlii. 
5): he had more choice appearances, clearer illuminations, and more 
lively instructions. And, though his people fall into temptation, 
yet, after their rising, they have more signal marks of his favor than 
others have, or themselves, before they fell. Peter had been the 
butt of Satan’s rage, in tempting him to deny Christ, and he had 
shamefully complied with the temptation; yet, to him particularly, 
must the first news of the Redeemer’s resurrection be carried, by 
God’s order, in the mouth of an angel (Mark xvi. 7); “Go your 
ways, tell his disciples, and Peter.” We have the greatest commu- 
nion with God after a victory ; the most refreshing truths after the 
devil hath done his worst. God is ready to furnish us with strength 
in a combat, and cordials after it. 

4, The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in discovering and 
advancing inward grace by this means. The issue of a temptation 
of a Christian is often like that of Christ’s, the manifesting a greater 
vigor of the Divine nature, in affections to God, and enmity to sin. 
Spices perfume not the air with their scent till they are invaded by 
the fire: the truth of grace is evidenced by them. The assault of 
an enemy revives, and actuates that strength and courage which is 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. ole 


in a man, perhaps unknown to himself, as well as others, till he 
meets with an adversary: many seem good, not that they are so in 
themselves, but for want of a temptation: this many times verifies 
a virtue, which was owned upon trust before, and discovers that we 
had more grace than we thought we had. The solicitations of 
Joseph’s mistress cleared up his chastity: we are many times under 
temptation, as a candle under the snuffer; it seems to be out, but 
presently burns the clearer. Afflictions are like those clouds which 
look black, and eclipse the sun from the earth, but yet, when they 
drop, refresh that ground they seem to threaten, and multiply the 
grain on the earth, to serve for our food; and so our troubles, while 
they wet us to the skin, wash much of that dust from our graces 
which in a clearer day had been blown upon us. ‘T’oo much rest 
corrupts; exercise teacheth us to manage our weapons: the spiritual 
armor would grow rusty, without opportunity to furbish it up ; faith 
receives a new heart by every combat, and by every victory; lkea 
fire, it spreads itself further, and gathers strength by the blowing of 
the wind. While the gardener commands his servant to shake the 
tree, he intends to fasten its roots, and settle it firmer in its place; 
and is this an ill-will to the plant? 

5. His goodness is seen in temptations, in preventing sin which 
we were likely to fall into. Paul’s thorn in the flesh was to prevent 
the pride of his spirit, and let out the windiness of his heart (2 Cor. 
xii. 7), lest it should be exalted above measure. The goodness of 
God makes the devil a polisher, while he intends to be a destroyer. 
The devil never works, but suitably to some corruption lurking in 
us: Divine goodness makes his fiery darts a means to discover, and 
so to prevent the treachery of that perfidious inmate in our hearts; 
humility is a greater benefit than a putrefying pride; if God brings 
us into a wilderness to be tempted of the devil, it is to bring down 
our loftiness, to starve our carnal confidence, and expel our rusting 
“security” (Deut. vill. 2); we many times fly under a temptation to 
God, from whom we sat too loose before. Is it not goodness to use 
those means that may drive us into his own arms? It is not a want 
of goodness to soap the garment, in order to take away the spots; 
we have reason to bless God for the assaults from hell, as well as 
pure mercies from heaven; and it is a sin to overlook the one as 
well as the other, since Divine goodness shines in both. 

6. The goodness of God is seen in temptations, in fitting us more 
for his service. Those whom God intends to make choice instru- 
ments in his service, are first seasoned with strong temptations, as 
timber reserved for the strong beams of a building is first exposed to 
sun and wind, to make it more compact for its proper use. By this 
men are brought to answer the end of their creation, the service of 
God, which is their proper goodness. Peter was, after his foil by 
a temptation, more courageous in his Master’s cause than before, and 
the more fitted to strengthen his brethren. 

Thus the goodness of God appears in all parts of his government. 

V. I shall now come to the Use. First, Of instruction. 

1. If God be so good, how unworthy is the contempt or abuse of 
nis goodness! (1.) The contempt and abuse of Divine goodness 1s 


314 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


frequent and common ; it began in the first ages of the world, and 
commenced a few moments after the creation; it hath not to this 
day diminished its affronts; Adam began the dance, and his pos- 
terity have followed him; the injury was directed against this, when 
he entertained the seducer’s notion of God’s being an envious Deity, 
in not indulging such a knowledge as he might have afforded him 
(Gen. iii. 5): “God doth know, that you shall be as gods, knowing 
good and evil.” The charge of envy is utterly inconsistent with 
pure goodness. What was the language of this notion, so easily enter- 
tained by Adam, but that the tempter was better than God, and the 
nature of God as base and sordid as the nature of a devil? Satan 
paints God with his own colors, represents him as envious and ma- 
licious as himself; Adam admires, and believes the picture to be 
true, and hangs it up as a beloved one in the closet of his heart. The 
devil still drives on the same game, fills men’s hearts with the same 
sentiments, and by the same means he murdered our first parents, he 
redoubles the stabs to his posterity. Every violation of the Divine 
law is a contempt of God’s goodness, as well as his sovereignty, be- 
cause his laws are the products both of the one and the other. Good- 
ness animates them, while sovereignty enjoys them: God hath com- 
manded nothing but what doth conduce to our happiness. All dis- 
obedience implies, that his law is a snare toentrap us, and make us 
miserable, and not an act of kindness, to render us happy, which is 
a disparagement to this perfection, as if he had commanded what 
would promote our misery, and prohibited what would conduce to 
our blessedness: to go far from him, and walk after vanity, is to 
charge him with our iniquity, and unrighteousness, baseness, and 
cruelty, in his commands: God implies it by his speech (Jer. i. 5), 
“What iniquity have your fathers found in me, that they are gone 
far from me, and walked after vanity?” as if, like a tyrant, he had 
consulted cruelty in the composure of them, and designed to feast 
himself with the blood and misery of his creatures. very sin is, in 
its own nature, a denial of God to be the chiefest good and happi- 
ness, and implies that it is no great matter to lose him: it is a for- 
saking him as the Fountain of Life, and a preferring a cracked and 
“empty cistern” as the chief happiness before him (Jer. i. AP 
Though sin is not so evil as God is good, yet it is the greatest evil, 
and stands in opposition to God as the greatest good. Sin disorders 
the frame of the world; it endeavored to frustrate all the communi- 
cations of Divine goodness in creation, and to stop up the way of 
any further streams of it to his creatures. 

(2.) The abuse and contempt of the Divine goodness is base and 
disingenious. It is the highest wickedness, because God is the high- 
est goodness, pure goodness that cannot have anything in him 
worthy of our contempt. Let men injure God under what notion 
they will, they injure his goodness; because all his attributes are 
summed up in this one, and all, as it were, deified by it. For what- 
soever power or wisdom he might have, if he were destitute of this 
he were not God: the contempt of his goodness implies him to be 
the greatest evil, and worst of beings. Badness, not goodness, is the 
proper object of contempt: as respect 1s a propension of mind to 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 815 


something that is good, so contempt is an alienation of the mind 
from something as evil, either simply or supposedly evil in its nature, 
or base or unworthy in its action towards that person that contemns 
it. As men desire nothing but what they apprehend to be good, so 
they slight nothing but what they apprehend to be evil: since no- 
thing, therefore, is more contemned by us than God, nothing more 
spurned at by us than God, it will follow that we regard him as the 
most loathsome and despicable being, which is the greatest baseness. 
And our contempt of him is worse than that of the devils; they in- 
jure him under the inevitable strokes of his justice, and we slight 
him when we are surrounded with the expressions of his bounty ; 
they abuse him under vials of wrath, and we under a plenteous lib- 
erality: they malice him, because he inflicts on them what is hurt- 
ful; and we despise him, because he commands what is profitable, 
holy, and honorable, in its own nature, though not in our esteem. 
They are not under those high obligations as we; they abuse his 
creating, and we his redeeming goodness: he never sent his Son to 
shed a drop of blood for their recovery ; they can expect nothing but 
the torment of their persons, and the destruction of their works ; but 
we abuse that goodness that would rescue us since we are miserable, 
as well as that righteousness which created us innocent. How base 
is it to use him so ill, that is not once or twice, but a daily, hourly 
Benefactor to us; whose rain drops upon the earth for our food, and 
whose sun shines upon the earth for our pleasure as well as profit: 
such a Benefactor as is the true Proprietor of what we have, and 
thinks nothing too good for them that think everything too much 
for his service! How unworthy is it to be guilty of such base car- 
riage towards him, whose benefits we cannot want, nor live without! 
How disingenious both to God and ourselves, to “despise the riches 
of his goodness, that are designed to lead us to repentance” (Rom. ii. 
4), and by that to happiness! And more heinous are the sins of re- 
newed men upon this account, because they are against his “ good- 
ness” not only offered to them, but tasted by them; not only against 
the notion of goodness, but the experience of goodness, and the rel- 
ished sweetness of choicest bounty. 

(3). God takes this contempt of his goodness heinously. He 
never upbraids men with anything in the Scripture, but with the 
abuse of the good things he hath vouchsafed them, and the un- 
mindfulness of the obligations arising from them. ‘his he bears 
with the greatest regret and indignation. Thus he upbraids Eli 
with the preference of him to the priesthood above other families 
(1 Sam. ii. 28): and David with his exaltation to the crown of Israel 
(2 Sam. xii. 7—9), when they abused those honors to carelessness 
and licentiousness. All sins offend God, but sins against his good- 
ness do more disparage him; and, therefore, his fury is the greater, 
by how much the more liberally his benefits have been dispensed. 
It was for abuse of Divine goodness, as soon as it was tasted, that 
some angels were hurled from their blessed habitation and more 
happy nature: it was for this Adam lost his present enjoyments, 
and future happiness, for the abuse of God’s goodness in creation. 
For the abuse of God’s goodness the old world fell under the fury 


316 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of the flood; and for the contempt of the Divine goodness in re- 
demption, Jerusalem, once the darling city of the infinite Monarch 
of the world, was made an Aceldema, a field of blood. For this 
cause it is, that candlesticks have been removed, great lights put 
out, nations overturned, and ignorance hath triumphed in places 
bright betore with the beamsof heaven. God would have little care 
of his own goodness, if he always prostituted the fruits of it to our 
contempt. Why should we expect he should always continue that 
to us which he sees we will never use to his service? When the 
Israelites would dedicate the gifts of God to the service of Baal, 
then he would return, and take away his corn, and his wine, and 
make them know by the loss, that those things were his in do- 
minion, which they abused, as if they had been sovereign lords of 
them (Hos. 11. 8, 9). Benefits are entailed upon us no longer than 
we obey (Josh. xxiv. 20): “If you forsake the Lord, he will do you 
‘hurt, after he hath done you good.” While we obey, his bounty 
shall shower upon us: and when we revolt, his justice shall con- 
sume us. Present mercies abused, are no bulwarks against inde- 

endent judgments. Got hath curses as well as blessings; and they 
shall light more heavy when his blessings have been more weighty: 
justice is never so severe as when it comes to right goodness, and 
revenge its quarrel for the injuries received. 

A convenient inquiry may be here, How God’s goodness is con- 
temned or abused ? 

Ist. By a forgetfulness of his benefits. We enjoy the mercies, 
and forget the Donor; we take what he gives, and pay not the 
tribute he deserves; the ‘“ Israelites forgot God their Saviour, which 
had done great things in Egypt” (Ps. c. 21). We send God's 
mercies where we would have God send our sins, into the land of 
forgetfulness, and write his benefits where himself will write the 
names of the wicked, in the dust, which every wind defaceth: the 
remembrance soon wears out of our minds, and we are so far from 
remembering what we had before, that we scarce think of that hand 
that gives, the very instant wherein his benefits drop upon us. 
Adam basely forgot his Benefactor, presently after he had been 
made capable to remember him, and reflect upon him; the first re- 
mark we hear of him, is of his forgetfulness, not a syllable of his 
thankfulness. We forget those souls he hath lodged in us, to ac- 
knowledge his favors to our bodies; we forget that image where- 
with he beautified us, and that Christ he exposed as a criminal to 
death for our rescue, which is such an act of goodness as cannot be 
expressed by the eloquence of the tongue, or conceived by the 
acuteness of the mind. Those things which are so common, that 
they cannot be invisible to our eyes, are unregarded by our minds ; 
our sense prompts our understanding, and our understanding is deaf 
to the plain dictates of our sense. We forget his goodness in the 
sun, while it warms us, and his showers while they enrich us; in 
the corn, while it nourisheth us, and the wine while it refresheth 
us; ‘She did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil” 
(Hos. ii. 8): she that might have read my hand in every bit of 
bread, and every drop of drink, did not consider this. It is an in- 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 814 


justice to forget the benefits we receive from man ; it is a crime of 
a higher nature to forget those dispensed to us by the hand of God, 
who gives us those things that all the world cannot furnish us 
with, without him. The inhabitants of Troas will condemn us, who 
worshipped mice, in a grateful remembrance of the victory they 
had made easy for them, by gnawing their enemies’ bow-strings. 
They were mindful of the courtesy of animals, though unintended 
by those creatures; and we are regardless of the fore-meditated. 
bounty of God. It is in God’s judgment a brutishness beyond that 
of a stupid ox, or a duller ass; ‘The ox knows his owner, and the 
ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people do not 
consider” (Isa. i. 8). The ox knows his owner that pastures him, 
and the ass his master that feeds him; but man is not so good as to 
be like to them, but so bad as to be inferior to them: he forgets 
Him that sustains him, and spurns at him, instead of valuing him 
for the benefits conferred by him. How horrible is it, that God 
should lose more by his bounty, than he would do by his parsi- 
mony! If we had blessings more sparingly, we should remember 
him more gratefully. If he had sent us a bit of bread in a distress 
by a miracle, as he did to Elijah by the ravens, it would have 
stuck longer in our memories; but the sense of daily favors soonest 
wears out of our minds, which are as great miracles as any in their 
own nature, and the products of the same power; but the wonder 
they should beget in us, is obscured by their frequency. | 

dd. The goodness of God is contemned by an impatient murmur- 
ing. Our repinings proceed from an inconsideration of God’s free 
liberality, and an ungrateful temper of spirit. Most men are guilty 
of this.” Itis implied in the commendation of Job under his pres- 
sures (Job i. 22): “In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God. 
foolishly,” as if it were a character peculiar to him, whereby he 
verified the eulogy God had given of him before (ver. 8), that there 
was “none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man.” 
What is implied by the expression? but that scarce a man is to be 
found without unjust complaints of God, and charging him under 
their crosses with cruelty ; when in the greatest they have much more 
reason to bless him for his bounty in the remainder. Good men 
have not been innocent. Baruch complains of God for adding 
grief to his sorrow, not furnishing him with those “ great things” 
he expected (Jer. xlv. 3, 4); whereas, he had matter of thankful- 
ness in God’s gift of his life as a prey. But his master chargeth 
God in a higher strain: ‘‘O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was 
deceived: I am in derision daily” (Jer. xx. 7). When he met with 
reproach instead of success in the execution of his function, he 
quarrels with God, as if he had a mind to cheat him into ‘a mischief, 
when he had more reason to bless him for the honor of being em- 
ployed in his service. Because we have not what we expect, we 
slight his goodness in what we enjoy. If he cross us in one thing, 
he might have made us successless in more: if he take away some 
things, he might as well have taken away all. The unmerited re- 
mainder, though never so little, deserves our acknowledgements 
more than the deserved loss can justify our repining. And for that 


318 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


which is snatched from us, there is more cause to be thankful, that 
we have enjoyed it so long, than to murmur that we possess it no 
longer. Adam’s sin implies a repining: he imagined God had been 
short in his goodness, in not giving him a knowledge he foolishly 
conceived himself capable of, and would venture a forfeiture of 
what already had been bountifully bestowed upon him. Man 
thought God had envied him, and ever since man studies to be 
even with God, and envies him the free disposal of his own doles: 
all murmuring, either in our own cause or others, charges God with 
a want of goodness, because there is a want of that which he fool- 
ishly thinks would make himself or others happy. The language 
of this sin is, that man thinks himself better than God; and if it 
were in his power, would express a more plentiful goodness than 
his Maker. As man is apt to think himself ‘ more pure than God” 
(Job iv. 17), so of a kinder nature also than an infinite goodness. 
The Israelites are a wonderful example of this contempt of Divine 
goodness; they had been spectators of the greatest miracles, and 
.partakers of the choicest deliverance: he had solicited their re- 
demption from captivity ; and when words would not do, he came 
to blows for them, musters up his judgments against their enemies, 
and, at last, as the Lord of hosts and God of battles, totally defeats 
their pursuers, and drowns them and their proud hopes of victory 
in the Red Sea. Little account was made of all this by the redeemed 
ones; ‘‘they lightly esteemed the rock of their salvation,” and 
launch into greater unworthiness, instead of being thankful for the 
breaking their yoke: they are angry with him, that he had done 
so much for them: they repented that ever they had complied with 
_ him, for their own deliverance, and had a regret that they had been 
brought out of Egypt: they were angry that they were freemen, 
and that their chains had been knocked off: they were more de- 
sirous to return to the oppression of their Egyptian tyrants, than 
have God for their governor and caterer, and be fed with his 
manna. ‘It was well with usin Egypt: Why came we forth out 
of Egypt?” which is called a ‘“despising the Lord” (Numb. xi. 18, 
20). They were so far from rejoicing in the expectation of the 
future benefits promised them, that they murmured that they had 
not enjoyed less; they were so sottish, as to be desirous to put 
themselves into the irons whence God had delivered them: they 
would seek a remedy in that Egypt, which had been the prison of 
their nation, and under the successors of that Pharaoh, who had 
been the invader of their liberties; they would snatch Moses from 
the place where the Lord, by an extraordinary providence, hath 
established him; they would stone those that minded them of the 
goodness of God to them, and thereupon of their crime and their 
duty (Numb. xvi. 8, 9—11); they rose against their benefactors, 
and “murmured against God,” that had strengthened the hands of 
their deliverers; they ‘despised the manna” he had sent them, 
and ‘despised the pleasant land” he intended them (?s. cvi. 24): 
all which was a high contempt of God and his unparalleled good- 
ness and care of them. All murmuring is an accusation of Divine 
goodness. 


/ 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 319 


8d. By unbelief and impenitency. What is the reason we come 
not to Him when he calls us; but some secret imagination that he is 
of an ill nature, means not as he speaks, but intends to mock us, in- 
stead of welcoming us? When we neglect his call, spurn at his 
bowels, slight the riches of his grace; as it 1s a disparagement to his 
wisdom to despise his counsel, so it is to his goodness to shght his 
offers, as though you could make better provision for yourselves than 
he is able or willing to do. It disgraceth that which is designed to 
the praise of the glory of his grace, and renders God cruel to his own 
Son, as being an unnecessary shedder of his blood. As the devil 
by his temptation of Adam, envied God the glory of his creating 
goodness, so unbelief envies God the glory of his redeeming grace: 
it is a bidding defiance to him, and challenging him to muster up 
the legions of his judgments, rather than have sent his Son to suffer 
for us, or his Spirit to solicit us. Since the sending his Son was the 
greatest act of goodness that God could express, the refusal of him 
must be the highest reproach of that hberality God designed to com- 
mend to the world in so rare a gift: the ingratitude in this refusal 
must be as high in the rank of sins, as the person slighted is in the 
rank of beings, or rank of gifts. Christ is a gift (Rom. v. 16), the 
royalest gift, an unparalleled gift, springing from inconceivable trea- 
sures of goodness (John iii. 16). What is our turning our backs 
upon this gift but a low opinion of it? as though the richest jewel 
of heaven were not so valuable as a swinish pleasure on earth, and 
deserved to be treated at no other rate than if mere offals had been 
presented to us. The plain language of it is, that there were no gra- 
cious intentions for our welfare in this present; and that he is not 
as good, in the mission of his Son, as he would induce us to imagine. 
Impenitence is also an abuse of this goodness, either by presump- 
tion, as if God would entertain rebels that bid defiance against him 
with the same respect that he doth his prostrate and weeping sup- 
pliants; that he will have the same regard to the swine as to the 
children, and lodge them in the same habitation ; or it speaks a sus- 
picion of God as a deceitful Master, one of a pretended, not a real 
goodness, that makes promises to mock men, and invitations to de- 
Tude them: that he is an implacable tyrant, rather than a good 
Father; a rigid, not a kind Being, delightful only to mark our faults, 
and overlook our services. 

4th. The goodness of God is contemned by a distrust of his provl- 
dence. As all trust in him supposeth him good, so all distrust of 
him supposeth him evil; either without goodness to exert his power, 
or without power to display his goodness. Job seems to have a spice 
of this in his complaint (Job xxx. 20), “I ery unto thee, and thou 
dost not hear me; I stand up, and thou regardest me not.” It is a 
fume of the serpent’s venom, first breathed into man, to suspect him 
of cruelty, severity, regardlessness, even under the daily evidences 
of his good disposition: and it is ordinary not to believe him when 
ne speaks, nor credit him when he acts; to question the goodness of 
his precepts, and misinterpret the kindness of his providence; as if 
they were designed for the supports of a tyranny, and the deceit of 
the miserable. Thus the Israelites thought their miraculous deliver- 


320 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


ance from Egypt, and the placing them in security in the wilderness, 
was intended only to pound them up for a slaughter (Numb. xiv. 3): 
thus they defiled the lustre of Divine goodness which they had so 
highly experimented, and placed not that confidence in him which 
was due to so frequent a Benefactor, and thereby crucified the rich 
kindness of God, as Genebrard translates the word “limited” (Ps. 
Ixxviii. 41). It is also a jealousy of Divine goodness, when we seek 
to deliver ourselves from our straits by unlawful ways, as though 
God had not kindness enough to deliver us without committing evil. 
What! did God make a world, and all creatures in it, to think of 
them no more, not to concern himself in their affairs? If he be 
good, he is diffusive, and delights to communicate himself; and what 
subjects should there be for it, but those that seek him, and implore 
his assistance? It is an indignity to Divine bounty to have such 
mean thoughts of it, that it should be of a nature contrary to that of 
his works, which, the better they are, the more diffusive they are. 
Doth a man distrust that the sun will not shine any more, or the 
earth not bring forth its fruit? Doth he distrust the goodness of an 
approved medicine for the expelling his distemper? If we distrust 
those things, should we not render ourselves ridiculous and sottish ? 
and if we distrust the Creator of those things, do we not make our- 
selves contemners of his goodness? If his caring for us be a princi- 
pal argument to move us to cast our care upon him, as it is 1 Pet. v. 
7, “Casting your care upon him, for he cares for you;” then, if we 
cast not our care upon hin, it is a denial of his gracious care of us, 
as if he regarded not what becomes of us. 

oth. We do contemn or abuse his goodness by omissions of duty. 
These sometimes spring from injurious conceits of God, which end 
in desperate resolutions. It was the crime of a good prophet in his 
passion (2 Kings vi. 83): “This evil is of the Lord, why should I 
wait on the Lord any longer?” God designs nothing but mischief 
to us, and we will seek him no longer. And the complaint of those 
in Malachi (Mal. ii. 14) is of the same nature; “Ye have said, It is 
vain to serve God; and what profit is it that we have kept his ordi- 
nances?” We have all this while served a hard Master, not a Bene- 
factor, and have not been answered with advantages proportionable 
to our services; we have met with a hand too niggardly to dispense 
that reward which is due to the largeness of our offerings. When 
men will not lift up their eyes to heaven, and solicit nothing but the 
contrivance of their own brain, and the industry of their own heads, 
they disown Divine goodness, and approve themselves as their own 
gods, and the spring of their own prosperity. Those that run not to 
God in their necessity, to crave his support, deny either the arm of 
his power, or the disposition of his will, to sustain and deliver them: 
they must have very mean sentiments, or none at all, of this perfec- 
tion, or think him either too empty to fill them, or too churlish to 
relieve them; that he is of a narrow and contracted temper, and that 
they may sooner expect to be made better and happier by anything 
else than by him: and as we contemn his goodness by a total omis- 
sion of those duties which respect our own advantage and supply, as 
prayer; so we contemn him as the chiefest good, by an omission of 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 821 


the due manner of any act of worship which is designed purely for 
the acknowledgment of him. As every omission of the material part 
of a duty is a denial of his sovereignty as commanding it, so every 
omission of the manner of it, not performing it with due esteem and 
valuation of him, a surrender of all the powers of our soul to him, is 
a denial of him as the most amiable object. But certainly to omit 
those addresses to God which his precept enjoins, and his excellency 
deserves, speaks this language, that they can be well enough, and do 
well enough, without God, and stand in no need of his goodness to 
maintain them. The neglect or refusal in a malefactor to supplicate 
for his pardon, is a wrong to, and contempt of, the prince’s goodness: 
either implying that he hath not a goodness in his nature worthy 
of an address, or that he scorns to be obliged to him for any exercise 
of it. 

6th. The goodness of God is contemned, or abused, in relying upon 
our services to procure God’s good will to us. As, when we stand 
in need either of some particular mercy, or special assistance; when 
pressures are heavy, and we have little hopes of ease in an ordinary 
way; when the devotions in course have not prevailed for what we 
want; we engage ourselves by extraordinary vows and promises to 
God, hereby to open that goodness which seems to be locked up from 
us.k Sometimes, indeed, vows may proceed from a sole desire to 
engage ourselves to God, from a sense of the levity and inconstancy 
of our spirits; binding ourselves to God by something more sacred 
and inviolable than a common resolution. But many times the 
vowing the building of a temple, endowing a hospital, giving so 
much in alms if God will free them from a fit of sickness, and spin 
out the thread of their lives a little longer (as hath been frequent 
among the Romanists), arises from an opinion of laziness and a sel- 
fishness in the Divine goodness; that it must be squeezed out by 
some solemn promises of returns to him, before it will exercise itself 
to take their parts. Popular vows are often the effects of an igno- 
rance of the free and bubbling nature of this perfection of the gener- 
ousness and royalty of Divine goodness: as if God were of a mean 
and mechanic temper, not to part with anything unless he were in 
some measure paid for it; and of so bad a nature as not to give pas- 
sage to any kindness to his creature without a bribe. It implies also 
that he is of an ignorant as well as contracted goodness; that he hath 
so little understanding, and so much weakness of judgment, as to be 
taken with such trifles, and ceremonial courtships, and little prom- 
ises; and meditated only low designs, in imparting his bounty: it 
is just as if a malefactor should speak to a prince,—Sir, if you will 
but bestow a pardon upon me, and prevent the death I have merited 
for this crime, I will give you this rattle. All vows made with such 
a temper of spirit to God, are as injurious and abusive to his good- 
ness, as any man will judge such an offer to be to a majestic and 
gracious prince; as if it were a trading, not a free and royal good- 
ness. 

7th. The goodness of God is abused when we give up our souls 
and affections to those benefits we have from God; when we make 


® Amyral. Moral. Tom. IV. p. 291. 
VOL. I1L—21 


822 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


those things God’s rivals, which were sent to woo Us for him, and 
offer those affections to the presents themselves, which they were 
sent to solicit for the Master. This is done, when either we place 
our trust in them, or glue our choicest affections to them. This 
charge God brings against Jerusalem, the trusting in her own beauty, 
glory, and strength, though it was a comeliness put upon her by 
God (Hzek. xvi. 14,15). When a little sunshine of prosperity breaks 
out upon us, we are apt to grasp it with so much eagerness and 
closeness, as if we had no other foundation to settle ourselves upon, 
no other being that might challenge from us our sole dependence 
And the love of ourselves, and of creatures above God, is very 
natural to us: “Lovers of themselves, and lovers of pleasure 
more than of God” (2 Tim. iii. 2, 4). Self-love is the root, and 
the love of pleasures the top branch, that mounts its head high- 
est against heaven. It is for the love of the world that the dangers 
‘of the sea are passed over, that men descend into the bowels 
of the earth, pass nights without sleep, undertake suits without in- 
termission, wade through many inconveniences, venture their souls, 
and contemn God; in those things men glory, and foolishly grow 
proud by them, and think themselves safe and happy in them! 
Now to love ourselves above God, is to own ourselves better than 
God, and that we transcend him in an amiable goodness; or, if we 
love ourselves equal with God, it at least manifests that we think 
God no better than ourselves; and think ourselves our own chief 
good, and deny anything above us to outstrip us in goodness, where- 
by to deserve to be the centre of our affections and actions, and to 
love any other creature above him, is to conclude some defect in 
God; that he hath not so much goodness in his own nature as that 
creature hath, to complete our felicity ; that God is a slighter thing 
than that creature. It is to account God, what all the things in the 
world are,—an imaginary happiness, a goodness of clay ; and them 
what God isa Supreme Goodness. It is to value the goodness of. 
a drop above that of the spring, and the goodness of the spark 
above that of the sun. As if the bounty of God were of a 
less alloy than the advantages we immediately receive from the hands 
of a silly worm. By how much the better we think a creature to be, 
and. place our affections chiefly upon it, by so much the more defi- 
cient and indigent we conclude God; for God wants so much. in our 
conception, as the other thing hath goodness above him in our 
thoughts. Thus is God lessened below the creature, as if he had a 
mixture of evil in him, and were capable of an imperfect goodness. 
He that esteems the sun that shines upon him, the clothes that warm 
him, the food that nourisheth him, or any other benefit above the 
Donor, regards them as more comely and_useful than God himself; 
and behaves himself asif he were more obliged to them than to God, 
who bestowed those advantageous qualities upon them. 

8th. The Divine goodness is contemned, in sinning more freely 
upon the account of that goodness, and employing God’s benefits im 
a drudgery for our lusts. This is a treachery to his goodness, to 
make his benefits serve for an end quite contrary to that for which 

1 Cressol. Antholog. Part II. p. 29. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 323 


he sent them. As if God had been plentiful in his blessings, to hire 
them to be more fierce in their rebellions, and fed them to no other 
purpose, but that they might more strongly kick against him; this 
is the fruit which corrupt nature produceth. Thus the Egyptians, 
who had so fertile a country, prove unthankful to the Creator, by 
adoring the meanest creatures, and putting the sceptre of the Monarch 
of the world into the hands of the sottishest and cruellest beasts. 
And the Romans multiply their idols, as God multiplied their vic- 
tories. This is also the complaint of God concerning Israel: “ She 
did not know that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied 
her silver and gold, which they prepared for Baal” (Hos. ii. 8). 
They ungratefully employed the blessings of God in the worship of 
an idol against the will of the Donor. Soin Hos. x. 1; ‘ According 
to the multitude of his fruit, he hath increased the altars; according 
to the goodness of his land, they have made goodly images.” They 
followed their own inventions with the strength of my outward bless- 
ings; as their wealth increased, they increased the ornaments of 
their images ; so that what were before of wood and stone, they ad- 
vanced to gold and silver. And the like complaint you may see 
Ezek. 16, 17. Thus, 

[1.] The benefits of God are abused to pride, when men standing 
upon a higher ground of outward prosperity, vaunt it loftily above 
their neighbors; the common fault of those that enjoy a worldly 
sunshine, which the apostle observes in his direction to Timothy ; 
“Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high- 
minded” (1 Tim. vi. 17). Itis an ill use of Divine blessings to be 
filled by them with pride and wind. Also, 

[2.] When men abuse plenty to ease; because they have abun- 
dance, spend,their time in idleness, and make no other use of Divine 
enefits than to trifle away their time, and be utterly useless to the world. 

[3.] When they also abuse peace and other blessing to security ; 
as they which would not believe the threatenings of judgment, and 
the storm coming from a far country, because the Lord was in Sion, 
and her King in her; “Is not the Lord in Sion, is not her King in 
her” (Jer. vii. 19)? thinking they might continue their progress in 
their sin, because they had the temple, the seat of the Divine glory, 
Sion, and the promise of an everlasting kingdom to David; abusing 
the promise of God to presumption and security, and turning the 
grace of God into wantonness. 

[4.] Again, when they abuse the bounty of God to sensuality and 
luxury, misemploying the provisions God gives them, in resolving 
to live like beasts, when by a good improvement of them, they might 
attain the life of angeis. ‘Thus is the light of the sun abused to con- 
duct them, and the fruits of the earth abused to enable them to their 
prodigious debauchery: as we do, saith one, with the Thames, which 
brings us in provision, and we soil it with our rubbish. Themore 
God sows his gifts, the more we sow our cockle and darnel. Thus 
we make our outward happiness the most unhappy part of our lives, and 
by the strength of Divine blessings, exceed all laws of reason and 
vligion too. How unworthy a carriage is this, to use the express- 

™ Young, of Affliction, p. 34. 


324 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


ions of Divine goodness as occasions of a greater outrage and affront 
of him; when we stab his honor by those instruments he puts into 
our hands to glorify him! as if a favorite should turn that sword 
into the bowels of his prince, wherewith he knighted him; and a 
servant, enriched by a lord, should hire by that wealth, murderers 
to take away his life! How brutish is it, the more God courts us 
with his blessings, the more to spurn at him with our feet; like the 
mule that lifts up his heel against the dam, as soon as ever it hath 
sucked her! We never beat God out of our hearts, but by his own 
zifis; he receives no blows from men, but by those instruments he 
gave them to promote their happiness. While man is an enjoyer, 
he makes God a loser, by his own blessings; inflames his rebellion 
by those benefits which should kindle his love; and runs from him 
by the strength of those favors which should endear the donor to 
him: “ Do you thus requite the Lord, O foolish people, and unwise ?” 
is the expostulation (Deut. xxxii. 6.) Divine goodness appears in 
the complaint of the abuse of it, in giving them titles below their 
crime, and complaining more of their being unfaithful to their own 
interest, than enemies to his glory : “ foolish and unwise” in neglect- 
ing their own happiness; a charge below the crime, which deserved 
to be “‘abominable, ungrateful people to a prodigy.” All this car- 
riage towards God, is as if a man should knock the chirurgeon on the 
head, as soon as he hath set and bound up his dislocated members. 
So God compares the ungrateful behavior of the Israelites against 
him: “Though I have bound and strengthened their arms, yet do 
they imagine mischief against me” (Hos. vii. 15): a metaphor taken 
from a chirurgeon that applies corroborating plasters to a broken limb. 

9th. We contemn the goodness of God, in ascribing our benefits 
to other causes than Divine goodness. Thus Israel ascribed her feh- 
city, plenty, and success, to her idols, as “rewards which her lovers 
had given her” (Hos. ii. 5, 12). And this charge Daniel brought 
home upon Belshazzar: ‘Thou hast praised the gods of silver, and. 
gold, and brass, and iron; and the God in whose hand is thy breath, 
and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified” (Dan. v. 23). 
The God who hath given ‘success to the arms of thy ancestors, and 
conveyed by their hands so large a dominion to thee, thou hast not 
honored in the same rank with the sordidest of thy idols. It is the 
same case, when we own him not as the author of any success in our 
affairs, but by an overweaning conceit of our own sagacity, applaud 
and admire ourselves, and overlook the hand that conducted. us, and 
brought our endeavors to a good issue. We eclipse the glory of Di- 
vine goodness, by setting the crown that is due to it upon the head. 
of our own industry ; a sacrilege worse than Belshazzar’s drinking 
of wine with his lords and concubines in the sacred vessels pilfered 
from the temple; asin that place of Daniel. This was the proud vaunt 
of the Assyrian conqueror, for which God threatens to punish the 
fruit of his stout heart: “By the strength of my hand, I have done it, 
and by my wisdom; for I am prudent 7 and, ‘I have removed the 
pounds of the people, and have robbed their treasures :” and, “T have 
put down. the inhabitants like a valiant man” (Isa. x. 12-14). Nota 
word of Divine goodness and assistance in all this, but applauding 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 325 


his own courage and conduct. This is a robbing of God, to set up 
ourselves, and making Divine goodness a footstool, to ascend into 
his throne. And as it is unjust, so it is ridiculous, to ascribe to our- 
selves, or instruments, the chief honor of any work; as ridiculous 
as if a soldier, after a victory, should erect an altar to the honor of 
his sword; or an artificer offer sacrifices to the tools whereby he com- 
pleted some excellent and useful invention: a practice that every 
rational man would disdain, where he should see it. It is a discard- 
ing any thoughts of the goodness of God, when we imagine, that 
we chiefly owe anything in this world to our own industry or wit, 
to friends or means, as though Divine goodness did not open its hand 
to interest itself in our affairs, support our ability, direct our coun- 
sels, and mingle itself with anything we do. God is the principal 
author of any advantage that accrues to us, of any wise resolution 
we fix upon, or any proper way we take to compass it; no man can 
be wise in opposition to God, act wisely, or well without him; his 
goodness inspires men with generous and magnificent counsels, and 
furnisheth them with fit and proportionable means; when he with- 
draws his hand, men’s heads grow foolish, and their hands feeble ; 
folly and weakness drop upon them, as darkness upon the world 
upon the removal of the sun; it is an abuse of Divine goodness not 
to own it, but erect an idol in its place. Ezra was of another mind 
when he ascribed to the good hand of God the “ providing ministers 
for the temple,” and not to his own care and diligence (chap. vii. 18) ; 
and Nehemiah, the ‘success he had with the king” in the behalf of 
his nation, and not solely to his favor with the prince, or the arts he 
used to please him (chap. ii. 8). 

, 2. The second information is this: If God be so good, it is a cer- 
tain argument that man is fallen from his original state. Itis the 
complaint of man, sometimes, that other creatures have more of 
earthly happiness than men have; live freer from cares and trouble, 
and are not racked with that solicitousness and anxiety as man is: 
have not such distempers to embitter their lives. It is a good ground 
for man to look into himself, and consider whether he hath not, some 
ways or other, disobliged God more than other creatures can possi- 
bly do. We often find that the creatures men have need of in this 
state, do not answer the expectation of man: ‘‘Cursed be the ground 
for thy sake” (Gen. iii. 17). A fruitful land is made barren; thorns 
and thistles triumph upon the face of the earth, instead of good fruit 
Is it likely that that goodness, which is as infinite as his power, anc 
knows no more limits than his Almightiness, should imprint so many 
scars upon the world, if he had not been heinously provoked by some 
miscarriage of his creature? Infinite Goodness could never move 
Infinite Justice to inflict punishment upon creatures, if they had not 
highly merited it; we cannot think that any creature was blemished 
with a principle of disturbance, as it came first’ out of the hand of 
God. All things were certainly settled in a due order and depend- 
ence upon one another; nothing could be ungrateful and unusefu! 
to man by the original law of their creation; if there had, it had not 
been goodness, but evil and baseness, that had created the world. 
When we see, therefore, the course of nature overturned, the order 


326 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


Divine goodness had placed, disturbed; and the creatures pronoun- 
ced good and useful to man, employed as instruments of vengeance 
against him; we must conclude some horrible blot upon human na- 
ture, and very odious to a God of infinite goodness; and that this 
blot was dashed upon man by himself, and his own fault; for it is 
repugnant to the infinite goodness of God to put into the creature a 
sinning nature, to hurry him into sin, and then punish him for that 
which he had impressed upon him. The goodness of God inclines 
him to love goodness wherever he finds it; and not to punish any 
that have not deserved it by their own crimes. The curse we there- 
fore see the creatures groan under, the disorders in nature, the frus- 
trating the expectations of man in the fruits of the earth and plenti- 
ful harvests, the trouble he is continually exposed to in the world, 
which tedders down his spirit from more generous employments, 
shows that man is not what he was when Divine goodness first 
erected him; but hath admitted into his nature something more un- 
comely in the eye of God; and so heinous, that it puts his goodness 
sometimes to a stand, and makes him lay aside the blessings his hand 
was filled with, to take up the arms of vengeance, wherewith to fight 
against the world. Divine goodness would have secured his crea- 
tures from any such invasions, and never used those things against 
man, which he designed in the first frame for man’s service, were 
there not some detestable disorder risen in the nature of man which 
makes God withhold his liberality and change the dispensation of\ 
his numerous benefits into legions of judgments. The consideration 
of the Divine goodness, which is a notion that man naturally con- 
cludes to be inseparable from the Deity, would, to an unbiassed rea- 
son, verify the history of those punishments settled upon man in the 
third chapter of Genesis, and make the whole seem more probable 
to reason at the first relation. This instruction naturally flows from 
the doctrine of Divine goodness: if God be so good, it is a certain 
argument that man is fallen from his original state. 

3. The third information is this: If God be infinitely good, there 
can be no just complaint against God, if men be punished for abus- 
ing his goodness. Man had nothing, nay, it was impossible he could 
have anything, from Infinite Goodness to disobhge him, but to en- 
gage him. God never did, nay, never could, draw his sword against 
man, till man had slighted him and affronted him by the strength 
of his own bounty. It is by this God doth justify his severest pro- 
ceedings against men, and very seldom charges them with any else 
as the matter of their provocations (Hos. 11. 9): “Therefore will I 
return, and take away my corn in the time thereof, and my wine in 
the season thereof, and will recover my wool and my flax.” And 
in Ezek. xvi., after he had drawn out a bill of complaint against 
them, and inserted only the abuse of his benefits, as a justification 
of what he intended to do; he concludes (ver. 27), “‘ Behold, there- 
fore, | have stretched out my hand over thee, and diminished th 
ordinary food, and delivered thee unto the will of them that hate 
thee.” When men suffer, they suffer justly ; they were not con- 
strained by any violence, or forced by any necessity, nor provoked 
by any ill usage, to turn head against God, but broke the bands of 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 827 


the strongest obligations and most tender allurements. What man, 
what devil, can justly blame God for punishing them, after they had 
been so intolerably bold, as to fly in the face of that goodness that 
had obliged them, by giving them beings of a higher elevation than 
to inferior creatures, and furnishing them with sufficient strength to 
continue in their first habitation? Man seems to have less reason to 
accuse God of rigor than devils; since, after his unreasonable re- 
volt, a more express goodness than that which created him hath soli- 
cited him to repentance, courted him by melting promises and ex- 
postulations, added undeniable arguments of bounty, and drawn out 
the choicest treasures of heaven, in the gift of his Son, to prevail 
over men’s perversity. And yet man, after he might arrive to the 
height and happiness of an angel, will be fond of continuing in the 
meanness and misery of a devil; and more strongly link himself to 
the society of the damned spirits, wherein, by his first. rebellion, he 
had incorporated himself. Who can blame God for vindicating his 
own goodness from such desperate contempts, and the extreme in- 
gratitude of man? If God be good, it is our happiness to adhere to 
him; if we depart from him, we depart from goodness; and if evil 
happen to us, we cannot blame God, but ourselves, for our depar- 
tures Why are men happy? because they cleave to God. Why 
are men miserable? because they recede from God. It is then our 
own fault that we are miserable; God cannot be charged with any 
injustice if we be miserable, since his goodness gave means to pre- 
vent it, and afterwards added means to recover us from it, but all 
despised by us. The doctrine of Divine goodness justifies every 
stone laid in the foundation of hell, and every spark in that burn- 
ing furnace, since it is for the abuse of infinite goodness that 1t was 
kindled. 

4, The fourth information: Herevis a certain argument, both for 
God’s fitness to govern the world, and his actual government of it. 

(1.) This renders him fit for the government of the world, and 
gives him a full title to it. This perfection doth the Psalmist cele- 
brate throughout the 107th Psalm, where he declares God’s works of 
providence (ver. 8, 15, 21, 32). Power without goodness would de- 
face, instead of preserving; ruin is the fruit of rigor without kind- 
ness; but God, because of his infinite and immutable goodness, 
cannot do anything unworthy of himself, and uncomely in itself, or 
destructive to any moral goodness in the creature. It is impossible 
he should do anything that is base, or act anything but for the best, 
because he is essentially and naturally, and, therefore, necessarily 
good. Asa good tree cannot bring forth bad fruit, so a good God 
cannot produce evil acts, no more than a pure beam of the sun can 
engender so much as a mite of darkness, or infinite heat produce any 
particle of cold. As God is so much light, that he can be no dark- 
ness, so he is so much good, that he can have no evil; and because 
there is no evil in him, nothing simply evil can be produced by him. 
Since he is good by nature, all evil is against his nature, and God 
can do nothing against his nature; it would be a part of impotence 
in him to will that which is evil; and, therefore, the misery man 

= Petay. Theolog. Dogmat. Vol. L p. 407. 


328 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


feels, as well as the sin whereby he deserves that misery, are said to 
be from himself (Hos. xiii. 9): “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thy- 
self!” And though God sends judgments upon the world, we have 
shown these to be intended for the support and vindication of his 
goodness. And Hezekiah judged no otherwise, when, after the 
threatening of the devastation of his house, the plundering his treas- 
ures, and captivity of his posterity, he replies, “ Good is the word of 
the Lord, which thou hast spoken” (Isa. xxxix. 8). God cannot act 
anything that is base and cruel, because his goodness is as infinite as 
his power, and his power acts nothing but what his wisdom directs, 
and his goodness moves him to. Wisdom is the head in government, 
omniscience the eye, power the arm, and goodness the heart and 
spirit in them, that animates all, 

(2.) As goodness renders Him fit to govern the world, so God doth 
actually govern the world. Can we understand this perfection aright, 
and yet imagine that he is of so morose a disposition as to neglect 
the care of his creatures? that his excellency, which was displayed 
in framing the world, should withdraw and wrap up itself in his own 
bosom, without looking out, and darting itself out in the disposal 
of them? Can that which moved him first to erect a world, sutfer 
him to be unmindful of his own work? Would he design first to 
display it in creation, and afterwards obscure the honor of it? That 
cannot be entitled an infinite permanent goodness, which should be 
so indifferent as to let the creatures tumble together as they please, 
without any order, after he had moulded them in his hand. If good- 
ness be diffusive and communicative of itself, can it consist with the 
nature of it, to extend itself to the giving the creatures being, and 
then withdraw and contract itself, not caring what becomes of them? 
It is the nature of goodness, after it hath communicated itself, to en- 
large its channels; that fountain that springs up in a little hollow 
part of the earth, doth in a short progress increase its streams, and 
widen the passages through which it runs; it would be a blemish to 
Divine goodness, if it did desert what it made, and leave things to 
wild confusions, which would be, if a good hand did not manage 
them, and a good mind preside over them. This is the lesson in- 
tended to us by all his judgments (Dan. iv. 17), “That the living 
may know that the Most High rules in the kingdoms of men.” If 
he doth not actually govern the world, he must have devolved it 
somewhere, cither to men or angels; not to men, who naturally want 
a goodness and wisdom to govern themselves, much more to govern 
others exactly. And, besides the misinterpretations of actions, they 
are liable to the want of patience, to bear with the provocations of 
the world; since some of the best at one time in the world, and, in the 
greatest example of meckness and sweetness, would have kindled a 
fire in heaven to have consumed the Samaritans, for no other affront 
than a non-entertainment of their Master and themselves (Luke ix. 
54). Nor hath he committed the disposal of things to angels, either 
good or bad; though he useth them as instruments in his govern- 
ment, yet they are not the principal pilots to steer the world. Bad 
angels certainly are not; they would make continual ravages, med- 
itate ruin, never defeat their own counsels, which they manage by the 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 829 


wicked as the instruments in the world, nor fill their spirits with dis- 
quiet and restlessness when they are engaged in some ruinous design, 
as often is experienced: nor hath he committed it to the good angels, 
who, for aught we know, are not more numerous than the evil ones 
are; but besides, we can scarcely think their finite nature capable of 
so much goodness, as to bear the innumerable debaucheries, villanies, 
blasphemies, vented in one year, one week, one day, one hour, 
throughout the world; their zeal for their Creator might well be 
supposed to move them to testify their affection to him in a constant 
and speedy righting of his injured honor upon the heads of the of.- 
fenders. ‘The evil angels have too much cruelty, and would have 
no care of justice, but take pleasure in the blood of the most inno- 
cent, as well as the most criminal; and the good angels have too 
little tenderness to suffer so many crimes: since the world, therefore, 
continues without those floods of judgments, which it daily merits ; 
since, notwithstanding all the provocations, the order of it is pre- 
served ; it is a testimony that an Infinite Goodness holds the helm in 
his hands, and spreads its warm wings over it. 

5. The fifth information is this:"Hence we may infer the ground 
of all religion; it is this perfection of goodness. As the goodness 
of God is the lustre of all his attributes, so it is the foundation and 
link of all true religious worship: the natural religion of the hea- 
thens was introduced by the consideration of Divine goodness, in 
the being he had bestowed upon them, and the provisions that were 
made for them. Divine bounty was the motive to erect altars, and 
present sacrifices, though they mistook the object of their worship, 
and offered the dues of the Creator to the instruments whereby he 
conveyed his benefits to them: and you find, that the religion insti- 
tuted by him among the Jews, was enforced upon them by the con- 
sideration of their miraculous deliverance from Egypt, the preserva- 
tion of them in the wilderness, and the enfeoffing them in a land 
flowing with milk and honey. \ Every act of bounty and success the 
heathens received, moved them to appoint new feasts, and repeat 
their adorations of those deities they thought the authors and promo- 
ters of their victories and welfare. The devil did not mistake the 
common sentiment of the world in Divine service, when he alleged 
to God, that “Job did not fear him for nought,” 2. e. worship him for 
nothing (Jobi. 9). All acts of devotion take their rise from God’s 
liberality, either from what they have or from what they hope; praise 
speaks the possession, and prayer the expectation, of some benefit 
from his hand: though some of the heathens made fear to be the 
prime cause of the acknowledgment and worship of a deity, yet 
surely something else besides and beyond this established so great a 
thing as religion in the world; an ingenuous religion could never 
have been born into the world without a notion of goodness, and 
would have gaped its last as soon as this notion should have expired 
in the minds of men. What encouragement can fear of power give, 
without sense of goodness? just as much as thunder hath, to invite 
a man to the place where it is like to fall, and crush him. The na- 
ture of “fear” is to drive from, and the nature of “ goodness” to al- 
lure to, the object: the Divine thunders, prodigies, and other armies 


380 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of his justice in the world, which are the marks of his power, could 
conclude in nothing but a slavish worship: fear alone would have 
made men blaspheme the Deity ; instead of serving him, they would 
have fretted against him; they might have offered him a trembling 
worship; but they could never have, in their minds, thought him 
worthy of an adoration; they would rather have secretly complained 
of him, and cursed him in their heart, than inwarly have adrnired 
him: the issue would have been the same, which Job’s wife advised 
him to, when God withdrew his protection from his goods and body: 
“Curse God, and die” (Job ii. 9). It is certainly the common senti- 
ment of men, that he that acts cruelly and tyrannically, is not worthy 
of an integrity to be retained towards him in the hearts of his subjects; 
but Job fortifies himself against this temptation from his bosom friend, 
by the consideration of the good he had received from God, which 
did more deserve a worship from him than the present evil had reason 
to discourage it. Alas! what is only feared, is hated, not adored. 
Would any seek to an irreconcileable enemy ? would any person af- 
fectionately list himself in the segvice of a man void of all good dis- 
position? would any distressed person put up a petition to that 
prince, who never gave any experiment of the sweetness of his na- 
ture, but always satiated himself with the blood of the meanest crim- 
‘nals? All affection to service is rooted up when hopes of receiving 
good are extinguished: there could not be a spark of that in the 
world, which is properly called religion, without a notion of goodness; 
the existence of God is the first pillar, and the goodness of God in 
rewarding the next, upon which coming to him (which includes all 
acts of devotion) is established (Heb. xi. 6); ‘He that comes unto 
God, must believe that he 1s, and that he is a rewarder of them that 
diligently seek him:” if either of those pillars be not thought to 
stand firm, all religion falls to the ground. It is this, as the most 
agreeable motive, that the apostle James uses, to encourage men’s 
approach to God, because “he gives liberally, and upbraideth not” 
(James i. 5). A man of a kind heart and a bountiful hand shall 
have his gate thronged with supphants, who sometimes would be 
willing to lay down their lives; “for a good man one would even 
dare to die: when one of a niggardly or tyrannical temper shall be 
destitute of all free and affectionate applications. What eyes would 
be lifted up to heaven? what hands stretched out, if there were not 
a knowledge of goodness there to enliven their hopes of speeding in 
their petitions? Therefore Christ orders our prayers to be directed 
to God asa Father, which is a title of tenderness, as well asa ‘ Father 
in heaven,” a mark of his greatness; the one to support our confi- 
dence, as well as the other to preserve our distance. God could not 
be ingenuously adored and acknowledged, if he were not liberal as 
well as powerful; the goodness of God is the foundation of all in- 
genuous religion, devotion and worship. 

6 The sixth instruction: The goodness of God renders God 
amiable. His goodness renders him beautiful, and his beauty ren- 
ders him lovely; both are linked together (Zech. ix. 17): “‘ How 
great is his goodness ! and how great is his beauty!” This 1s the 
most powerful attractive, and masters the affections of the soul: it 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. oak 


is goodness only supposed, or real, that is thought worthy to demerit 
our affections to anything. If there be not a reality of this, or at 
least an opinion and estimation of it in an object, it would want a 
force and vigor to allure our will. This perfection of God is the 
loadstone to draw us, and the centre for our spirits to rest in. 

1. This renders God amiable to himself. His goodness is his 
“Godhead” (Rom. i. 20): by his Godhead is meant his goodness; if 
he loves his Godhead for itself, he loves his goodness for itself; he 
would not be good, if he did not love himself; and if there were 
anything more excellent, and had a greater goodness than himself, 
he would not be good if he did not love that greater goodness above 
himself; for not only a hatred of goodness is evil, but an indifferent 
or cold affection to goodness hath a tincture of evil in it. If God 
were not good, and yet should love himself in the highest manner, 
he would be the greatest evil, and do the greatest evil in that act; 
for he would set his love upon that which is not the proper object 
of such an affection, but the object of aversion: his own infinite 
excellency, and goodness of his nature, renders him lovely and de- 
lightful to himself; without this he could not love himself in a com- 
mendable and worthy way, and becoming the purity of a Deity; 
and he cannot but love himself for this; for, as creatures, by not 
loving him as the supreme good, deny him to be the choicest good, 
so God would deny himself, and his own goodness, if he did not 
love himself, and that for his goodness. But the apostle tells us, that 
“God cannot deny himself” (2 Tim. ii. 18). Self-love, upon this ac- 
count, is the only prerogative of God, because there is not anything 
better than himself that can lay any just claim to his affections: he 
only ought to love himself, and it would be an injustice in him to 
himself, if he did not. He only can love himself for this: an infin- 
ite goodness ought to be infinitely loved, but he only being infinite, 
can only love himself according to the due merit of his own good- 
ness. He cannot be so amiable to any man, to any angel, to the 
highest seraphim, as he is to himself; because he is only capable in 
regard of his infinite wisdom, to know the infiniteness of his own 
goodness. And no creature can love him as he ought to be loved, 
unless it had the same infinite capacity of understanding to know 
him, and of affection to embrace him. This first renders God 
amiable to himself. 

2. It ought therefore to render him amiable to us. What renders 
him lovely to his own eye, ought to render him so to ours; and 
since, by the shortness of our understandings, we cannot love him 
as. he merits, yet we should be induced by the measures of his 
bounty, to love him as we can. If this do not present him lovely to 
us, we own him rather a devil than a God: if his goodness moved 
him to frame creatures, his goodness moved him also to frame crea- 
tures for himself and his own glory. It is a mighty wrong to him 
not to look with a delightful eye upon the marks of it, and return 
an affection to God in some measure suitable to his hiberality to us ; 
we are descended as low as brutes, if we understand him not to be 
the perfect good; and we are descended as low as devils, if our 
affections are not attracted by it. 


832 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


(1.) If God were not infinitely good, he could not be the object of 
supreme love. If he were finitely good, there might be other things | 
as good as God, and then Ged in justice could not challenge our 
choicest affections to him above anything else: it would be a de- 
fect of goodness in him to demand it, because he would despoil 
that which were equally good with him, of its due and right to our 
affections, which it might claim from us upon the account of its 
goodness: God would be unjust to challenge more than was due 
to him; for he would claim that chiefly to himself which another 
had a lawful share in. Nothing can be supremely loved that hath 
not a triumphant excellency above all other things; where 1s an 
equality of goodness, neither can justly challenge a supremacy, but 
only an equality of affection. : 

(2.) This attribute of goodness renders him more lovely than 
any other attribute. He never requires our adoration of him so 
much as the strongest or wisest, but as the best of beings: he 
uses this chiefly to constrain and allure us. Why would he be 
feared or worshipped, but because “there is forgiveness with him” 
(Ps. cxxx. 4)? it is for his goodness’ sake that he is sued to by 
his people in distress (Ps. xxv. 7), “For thy goodness’ sake, O 
Lord.” Men may be admired because of their knowledge, but they 
are affected because of their goodness: the will, in all the variety 
of objects it pursues, centres in this one thing of good as the 
term of its appetite. All things are beloved by men, because they 
have been bettered by them. Severity can never conquer enmity, 
and kindle love: were there nothing but wrath in the Deity, it 
would make him be feared, but render him odious, and that to 
an innocent nature. As the spouse speaks of Christ (Cant. v. 10, 
11), so we may of God: though she commends him for his head, 
the excellency of his wisdom; his eyes, the extent of his omnis- 
cience; his hands, the greatness of his power; and his legs, the 
swiftness of his motions and ways to and for his people; yet the 
“sweetness of his mouth,” in his gracious words and promises, 
closes all, and is followed with nothing but an exclamation, that 
“he is altogether lovely” (ver. 16). His mouth, in pronouncing 
pardog of sin, and justification of the person, presents him most 
lovely. His power to do good is admirable, but his will to do 
good is amiable: this puts a gloss upon all his other attributes. 
Though he had knowledge to understand the depth of our neces- 
sities, and power to prevent them, or rescue us from them, yet 
his knowledge would be fruitless, and his power useless, if he 
were of a rigid nature, and not touched with any sentiments of 
kindness. | 

(3.) This goodness therefore lays a strong obligation upon us. 
It is true he is lovely in regard of his absolute goodness, or the 
eoodness of his nature, but we should hardly be persuaded to re- 
turn him an affection without his relative goodness, his benefits 
to his creatures; we are obliged by both to love him. 

[1.] By his absolute goodness, or the goodness of his nature. 
Suppose a creature had drawn its original from something else 
wherein God had. no influx, and had never received the least 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 383 


mite of a benefit from him, but from some other hand, yet the 
infinite excellency and goodness of his nature would merit the 
love of that creature, and it would act sordidly and disingenuous- 
ly if it did not discover a mighty respect for God: for what in- 
genuity could there be in a rational creature, that were possessed 
with no esteem for any nature filled with unbounded goodness and 
excellency, though he had never been obliged to him for any favor? 
That man is accounted odious, and justly despicable by man, that 
reproaches and disesteems, nay, that doth not value a person of a 
high virtue in himself, and an universal goodness and charity to 
others, though himself never stood in need of his charity, and never 
had any benefit conveyed from his hands, nor ever saw his face, or 
had any commerce with him: a value of such a person is but a just 
due to the natural claim of virtue. And, indeed, the first object of love 
is God in the excellency of his own nature, as the first object of love 
in marriage is the person; the portion is a thing consequent upon 
it. ‘To love God only for his benefits, is to love ourselves first, and 
him secondarily : to love God for his own goodness and excellency, 
is a true love of God; a love of him for himself. That flaming fire 
in his own breast, though we have not a spark of it, hath a right to 
kindle one in ours to him. 

[2.] By his relative goodness, or that of his benefits. Though the 
excellency of his own nature, wherein there isa combination of good- 
ness, must needs ravish an apprehensive mind; yet a reflection upon 
his imparted kindness, both in the begs we have from him, and 
the support we have by him, must enhance his estimation. When 
the excellency of his nature, and the expressions of his bounty are 
in conjunction, the excellency of his own nature renders him estima- 
ble in a way of justice, and the greatness of his benefits renders him 
valuable in a way of gratitude: the first ravisheth, and the other 
allures and melts: he hath enough in his nature to attract, and sufli- 
cient in his bounty to engage our affections. The excellency of his 
nature is strong enough of itself to blow up our affections to him, 
were there not a malignity in our hearts that represents him under 
the notion of an enemy; therefore in regard of our corrupt state, the 
consideration of Divine largesses comes in for a share in the elevation 
of our affections. For, indeed, it is a very hard thing for a man to 
love another, though never so well qualified, and of an eminent vir- 
tue, while he believes him to be his enemy, and one that will severely 
handle him, though he hath before received many good turns from 
him; the virtue, valor, and courtesy of a prince, will hardly make 
him affected by those against whom he is in arms, and that are daily 
pilfered by his soldiers, unless they have hopes of a reparation from 
him, and future security from injuries. Christ, in the repetition of 
the command to “love God with all our mind, with all our heart, 
and with all our soul,” 2. e. with such an ardency above all things 
which glitter in our eye, or can be created by him, considers him as 
‘our God” (Matt. xxii. 37). And the Psalmist considers him as one 
that had kindly employed his power for him, in the eruption of his 
love (Ps. xviii. 1), “I will love thee, O Lord, my strength ;” and so 
in Ps. exvi. 1, “I love the Lord, because he hath heard the voice 


854 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of my supplications.” An esteem of the benefactor is inseparable 
from gratitude for the received benefits: and should not then the 
unparalleled kindness of God advance him in our thoughts, much 
more than slighter courtesies do a created benefactor in ours? It is 
an obligation on every man’s nature to answer bounty with gratitude, 
and goodness with love. Hence you never knew any man, nor can 
the records of eternity produce any man, or devil, that ever hated 
any person, or anything as good in itself: it is a thing absolutely 
repugnant to the nature of any rational creature. The devils hate 
not God because he is good, but because he is not so good to them 
as they would have him; because he will not unlock their chains, turn 
them into liberty, and restore them to happiness; @. e. because he will 
not desert the rights of abused goodness. But how should we send 
up flames of love to that God, since we are under his direct beams, 
and enjoy such plentiful influences! If the sun is comely in itself, 
yet it is more amiable to us, by the light we see, and the warmth we 
eel. 

1st. The greatness of his benefits have reason to affect us with a 
love to him. The impress he made upon our souls when he extracted 
us from the darkness of nothing; the comeliness he hath put upon us 
by his own breath; the care he took of our recovery, when we had 
lost ourselves; the expense he was at for our regaining our defaced 
beauty; the gift he made of his Son; the affectionate calls we have 
heard to over-master our corrupt appetites, move us to repentance, 
and make us disaffect our beloved misery; the loud sound of his 
word in our ears, and the more inward knockings of his Spirit in 
our heart; the offering us the gift of himself, and the everlasting 
happiness he courts us to, besides those common favors we enjoy in 
the world, which are all the streams of his rich bounty: the voice 
of all is loud enough to solicit our love, and the merit of all ought 
to be strong enough to engage our love: “ there is none like the God 
of Jeshurun, who rides upon the heaven in thy help, and in his ex- 
cellency on the sky” (Deut. xxxii. 26). 

24. The unmeritedness of them doth enhance this. It is but reason 
to love him who hath loved us first (1 John iv. 19). Hath he placed 
his delight upon any when they were nothing, and after they were 
sinful; and shall he set his delight upon such vile persons, and shall 
not we set our love upon so excellent an object as himself? How 
base are we, if his goodness doth not constrain us to affect him who 
hath been so free in his favor to us, who have merited the quite con- 
trary at his hands? If “his tender mercies are over all his works” 
(Ps. exlv. 9), he ought for it to be esteemed by all his works that are 
capable of a rational estimation. 

3d. Goodness in creatures makes them estimable, much more 
should the goodness of God render him lovely to us. If we love a 
little spark of goodness in this or that creature, if a drop be so de- 
licious to us, shall not the immense Sun of goodness, the ever-flowing 
Fountain of all, be much more delightful? The original excellency 
always outstrips what is derived from it; if so mean and contracted 
an object as a little creature deserves estimation for a little mite com- 
municated to it, so great and extended a goodness as is in the U-cator 


* 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 330 


much more merits it at our hands: he is good after the infinite 
methods of a Deity: a weak resemblance is lovely; much more ami- 
able, then, must be the incomprehensible original of that beauty. 
We love creatures for what we think to be good in them, though it 
may be hurtful; and shall we not love God, who is a real and un- 
blemished goodness, and from whose hand are poured out all those 
blessings that are conveyed to us by second causes? The object 
that delights us, the capacity we have to delight in it, are both from 
him; our love, therefore, to him should transcend the affection we 
bear to any instruments he moves for our welfare. ‘‘ Among the 
gods, there is none like thee, O Lord, neither are there any works 
like unto thy works” (Ps. lxxxvi. 8): among the pleasantest crea- 
tures there is none like the Creator, nor any goodness like unto his 
goodness. Shall we love the food that nourisheth us, and the med- 
icine that cures us, and the silver whereby we furnish ourselves with 
useful commodities? Shall we love a horse, or dog, for the benefits 
we have by them? and shall not the.spring of all those draw our 
souls after it, and make us aspire to the honor of loving and em- 
bracing Him who hath stored every creature with that which may 

leasure us? But, instead of endeavoring to parallel our affection 
with his kindness, we endeavor to make our disingenuity as exten- 
sive and towering as his Divine goodness. 

4th. This is the true end of the manifestation of his goodness, that 
he might appear amiable, and have a return of affection. Did God 
display his goodness only to be thought of, or to be loved? Itis 
the want of such a return, that he hath usually aggravated, from the 
benefits he hath bestowed upon men. Every thought of him should 
be attended with a motion suitable to the excellency of his nature 
and works. Can we think those nobler spirits, the angels, look upon 
themselves, or those frames of things in the heavens and earth, with- 
out starting some practical affection to him for them? Their knowl- 
edge of his excellency and works cannot be a lazy contemplation : 
it is impossible their wills and affections should be a thousand miles 
distant from their understandings in their operations. It is not the 
least part of his condescending goodness to court in such methods 
the affections of us worms, and manifest his desire to be beloved by 
us. Let us give him, then, that affection he deserves, as well as de- 
mands, and which cannot be withheld from him without horrible 
sacrilege. There is nothing worthy of love besides him; let no fire 
oe kindled in our hearts, but what may ascend directly to him. 

7, The seventh instruction is this: This renders God a fit object 
of trust and confidence. Since none is good but God, none can be 
a full and satisfactory ground or object of confidence but God: as all 
things derive their beings, so they derive their helpfulness to us from 
God; they are not, therefore, the principal objects of trust, but that 
-oodness alone that renders them fit instruments of our support; 
‘ey can no more challenge from us a stable confidence, than they 
can a supreme affection. It is by this the Psalmist allures men to a 
trust in him; “Taste and see how good the Lord is:” what is the 
consequence? “Blessed is the man that trusts in thee” (Ps. SEXING 
8). The voice of Divine goodness sounds nothing more intelligibly, 


* 


336 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


and a taste of it produceth nothing more effectually, than this. As 
the vials of his justice are to make us fear him, so the streams of his 
goodness are to make us rely on him: as his-patience is designed to 
broach our repentance, so his goodness is most proper to strengthen 
our assurance in him: that goodness which surmounted so many 
difficulties, and conquered so many motions that might be made 
against any repeated exercise of it, after it had been abused by the 
first rebellion of man; that goodness that after so much contempt of 
it, appeared in such a majestic tenderness, and threw aside those im- 
pediments which men had cast in the way of Divine inclinations: 
this goodness is the foundation of all reliance upon God. Who is 
better than God? and, therefore, who more to be trusted than God? 
As his power cannot act anything weakly, so his goodness cannot 
act anything unbecomingly, and unworthy of his infinite majesty. 
And here consider, 

(1) Goodness is the first motive of trust. Nothing but this could 
be the encouragement to man, had he stood in a state of mnocence, 
to present himself before God ; the majesty of God would have con- 
strained him to keep his due distance, but the goodness of God could 
only hearten his confidence: itis nothing else now that can preserve 
the same temper in us in our lapsed condition. ‘To regard him only 
as the Judge of our crimes, will drive us from him; but only the 
regard of him as the Donor of our blessings, will allure us to him. 
The principal foundation of faith is not the word of God, but God 
himself, and God as considered in this perfection. As the goodness 
of God in his invitations and providential blessings ‘leads us to re- 
pentence” (Rom. ii. 4), so, by the same reason, the goodness of God 
by his promises leads us to reliance. If God be not first believed to 
be good, he would not be believed at all in anything that he speaks 
or swears: if you were not satisfied in the goodness of a man, 
though he should swear a thousand times, you would value neither 
his word nor oath as any security. Many times, where we are cer- 
tain of the goodness of a man, we are willing to trust him without 
his promise. This Divine perfection gives credit to the Divine pro- 
mises; they of themselves would not be a sufficient ground of trust, 
without an apprehension of his truth; nor would his truth be very 
comfortable without a belief of his good will, whereby we are as- 
sured that what he promises to give, he gives liberally, free, and 
without regret. The truth of the promiser makes the promise cred 
ible, but the goodness of the promiser makes it cheerfully relied on. 
In Ps. lxxiii. (Asaph’s penitential psalm for his distrust of God, 
ne begins the first verse with an assertion of this attribute (ver. 1), 
“Truly God is good to Israel;” and ends with this fruit of it (ver. 
28), “I will put my trust in the Lord God.” It is a mighty ill na- 
ture that receives not with assurance the dictates of Infinite Good- 
ness, (that cannot deceive or frustrate the Loe we conceive of him) 
that is inconceivably more abundant in the breast and inclinations 
of the promiser, than expressible in the words of his promise, “ All 
true faith works by love” (Gal. v. 6), and, therefore, necessarily in- 
cludes a particular eyeing of this excellency in the Divine nature, 
which renders him amiable, and is the motive and encouragement of 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 3387 


a love to him. His power indeed is a foundation of trust, but his 
goodness is the principal motive of it. His power without good-will 
would be dangerous, and could not allure affection; and his good- 
will without power would be useless; and though it might merit a 
love, yet could not create a confidence; both in conjunction are 
strong grounds of hope, especially since his goodness is of the same 
infinity with his wisdom and power; and that he can be no more 
wanting in the effusions of this upon them that seek him, than in 
his wisdom to contrive, or his power to effect, his designs and works. 

(2.) This goodness is more the foundation and motive of trust un- 
der the gospel, than under the law. They under the law had more 
evidences of Divine power, and their trust eyed that much; though 
there was an eminency of goodness in the frequent deliverances 
they had, yet the power of God had a more glorious dress than his 
goodness, because of the extraordinary and miraculous ways where- 
by he brought those deliverances about. Therefore, in the catalogue 
of believers in Heb. xi. you shall find the power of God to be the 
centre of their rest and trust; and their faith was built upon the ex- 
traordinary marks of Divine power, which were frequently visible 
to them. But under the gospel, goodness and love was intended by 
God to be the chief object of trust; suitable to the excellency of 
that dispensation, he would have an exercise of more ingenuity in 
the creatures: therefore, it is said (Hos. iu. 5), a promise of gospel- 
times, ‘‘ They shall fear God and his goodness in the latter days,” 
when they shall return to “seek the Lord, and David their king.” 
It is not said, they shall fear God, and his power, but the Lord and 
his goodness, or the Lord for his goodness: fear is often in the Old 
Testament taken for faith, or trust. This Divine goodness, the ob- 
ject of faith, is that goodness discovered in David their king; the 
Messiah, our Jesus. God, in this dispensation, recommends his good- 
ness and love, and reveals it more clearly than other attributes, that 
the soul might have more prevailing and sweeter attractives to con- 
fide in him. 

(8.) A confidence in him gives him the glory of his goodness. 
Most nations that had nothing but the light of nature, thought it a 
great part of the honor that was due to God, to implore his good- 
ness, and cast their cares upon it. To do good, is the most honor- 
able thing in the world, and to acknowledge a goodness in a way of 
confidence, is as high an honor as we can give to it, and a great part 
of gratitude for what it hath already expressed. ‘T'herefore we find 
often, that an acknowledgement of one benefit received, was attend- 
ed with a trust in him for what they should in the future need (Ps. 
Ivi. 18): “Thou hast delivered my soul from death, wilt thou not 
deliver my feet from falling? So, 2 Cor. i. 10: and they who have 
been most eminent for their trust in him, have had the greatest 
eulogies and commendations from him. As a diffidence doth dis- 
pavage this perfection, thinking it meaner and shallower than 1t is, 
so confidence highly honors it. We never please him more, than 
when we trust in him; “The Lord takes pleasure in them that fear 
him, in them that hope in his mercy” (Ps. exlvil. 11). He takes it 
for an honor to have this attribute exalted by such a carriage of his 

VOL. I1.—22 


338 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


creature. He is no less offended when we think his heart straiten- 
ed, as if he were a parsimonious God; than when we think his arm 
shortened, as if he were an impotent and feeble God. Let us, there- 
fore, make this use of his goodness, to hearten our faith. When we 
are scared by the terrors of his justice, when we are dazzled by the 
arts of his wisdom, and confounded by the splendor of his majesty, 
we may take refuge in the sanctuary of his goodness; this will en- 
courage us, as well as astonish us; whereas, the consideration of his 
other attributes would only amaze us, but can never refresh us, but 
when they are considered marching under the conduct and banners 
of this. “When all the other perfections of the Divine nature are 
looked upon in conjunction with this excellency, each of them send 
forth ravishing and benign influences upon the applymg creature. 
It is more advantageous to depend upon Divine bounty, than our 
own cares; we may have better assurance upon this account in his 
cares for us, than in ours for ourselves. Our goodness for ourselves 
is finite; and besides, we are too ignorant: his goodness is infinite, 
and attended with an infinite wisdom; we have reason to distrust 
ourselves, not God. We have reason to be at rest, under that kind 
influence we have so often experimented; he hath so much good- 
ness, that he can have no deceit: his goodness in making the prom- 
ise, and his goodness in working the heart to a reliance on it, are 
grounds of trust in him; “ Remember thy word to thy servant, 
upon which thou hast caused me to hope” (Ps. cxix. 49). If his 
promise did not please him, why did he make it? If reliance on 
the promise did not please him, why did his goodness work it? It 
would be inconsistent with his goodness to mock his creature, and it 
would be the highest mockery to publish his word, and create a tem- 
per in the heart of his supplicant, suited to his promise which he 
never intended to satisfy. He can as little wrong his creature, as 
wrong himself; and, therefore, can never disappoint that faith which 
in his own methods casts itself into the arms of his kindness, and 
is his own workmanship, and calls him Author. That goodness that 
imparted itself so freely in creation, will not neglect those nobler 
creatures that put their trust in him. This renders God a fit object 
for trust and confidence. : 

8. The eighth instruction: This renders God worthy to be obey- 
ed and honored. There is an excellency in God to allure, as well as 
sovereignty to enjoin obedience: the infinite excellency of his na- 
ture is so great, that if his goodness had promised us nothing to en- 
courage our obedience, we ought to prefer him before ourselves, de- 
vote ourselves to serve him, and make his glory our greatest con- 
tent; but much more when he hath given such admirable express- 
ions of his liberality, and stored us with hopes of richer and fuller 
streams of it. When David considered the absolute goodness of 
his nature, and the relative goodness of his benefits, he presently 
expresseth an ardent desire to be acquainted with the Divine 
statutes, that he might make ingenious returns in a dutiful observ- 
ance; ‘Thou art good, and thou dost good ; teach me thy statutes” 
(Ps. exix. 63). As his goodness is the original, so the acknowledg- 
ment of it is ‘he end o: all, which cannot be without an observance 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 839 


of his will, His goodness requires of us an ingenuous, not a servile 
obedience. And this is established upon two foundations. 

[1.] Because the bounty of God hath laid upon us the strongest 
obligations. The strength of an obligation depends upon the great- 
ness and numerousness of the benefits received. The more excel- 
lent the favors are which are conferred upon any person, the more 
right hath the benefactor to claim an observance from the person 
bettered by him. Much of the rule and empire which hath been in 
several ages conferred by communities upon princes, hath had its 
first spring from a sense of the advantages they have received by 
them, either in protecting them from their enemies, or rescuing them 
from an ignoble captivity ; in enlarging their territories, or increasing 
their wealth. Conquest hath been the original of a constrained, but 
beneficence always the original of a voluntary and free subjection. 
Obedience to parents is founded upon their right, because they are 
instrumental in bestowing upon us being and life; and because this 
of life is so great a benefit, the law of nature never dissolves this 
obligation of obeying and honoring parents; it is as long-lived as 
the law of nature, and hath an universal practice, by the strength 
of that law, in all parts of the world: and those rightful chains are 
not unlocked, but by that which unties the knot between soul and 
body: much more hath God a right to be obeyed and reverenced, 
who is the principal Benefactor, and* moved all those second causes 
to impart to us, what conduced to our advantage. The just author- 
ity of God over us results from the superlativeness of his blessings 
he hath poured down upon us, which cannot be equalled, much less 
exceeded, by any other. As therefore upon this account he hath a claim 
to our choicest affections, so he hath also to most exact obedience ; 
and neither one nor other can be denied him, without a sordid and dis- 
ingenuous ingratitude; God therefore aggravates the rebellion of the 
Jews from the cares he had in the bringing them up (Isa. ii. 2), and the 
miraculous deliverance from Egypt (Jer. xi. 7, 8); implying that those 
benefits were strong obligations to an ingenuous observance of him. 

[2.] It is established upon this, that God can enjoin the observ 
ance of nothing but what is good. He may by the right of his 
sovereign dominion, command that which is indifferent in its own 
nature: as in positive laws, the not eating the fruit of the tree of 
the knowledge of good and evil, which had not been evil in itself, 
set aside the command of God to the contrary ; and: likewise in those 
ceremonial laws he gave the Jews: but in regard to the transcendent 
goodness and righteousness of his nature, he will not, he cannot 
command anything that is evil in itself, or repugnant to the true 
interest of his creature; and God never obliged the creature to any- 
thing but what was so free from damaging it, that it highly conduced 
to its good and welfare: and therefore 1t is said, that “ his commands 
are not grievous” (1 John v. 3): not grievous in their own nature, 
nor grievous to one possessed with a true reason. The command 
given to Adam in Paradise was not grievous in itself, nor could he 
ever have thought it so, but upon a false supposition instilled into 
him by the tempter. There is a pleasure results from the law of God 


° Amyrald. Dissert. p. 65. 


340 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


to a holy rational nature, a sweetness tasted both by the understand- 
ing and by the will, for they both ‘rejoice the heart and enlighten 
the eyes” of the mind (Ps. xix. 8). God being essentially wisdom 
and goodness, cannot deviate from that goodness in any orders he 
gives the creature; whatsoever he enacts must be agreeable to that 
rule, and therefore he can will nothing but what is good and excel- 
lent, and what is good for the creature; for since he hath put origin- 
ally into man a natural instinct to desire that which is good, he 
would never enact any thing for the creature’s observance,P that 
might control that desire imprinted by himself, but what might 
countenance that impression of his own hand; for if God did other- 
wise, he would contradict his own natural law, and be a deluder of 
his creatures, if he impressed upon them desires one way, and order- 
ed directions another. The truth is, all his moral precepts are 
comely in themselves, and they receive not their goodness from God’s 
positive command, but that command supposeth their goodness; if 
everything were good because God loves it, or because God wills it, 
2. é. that God’s loving it or willing it made that good which was not 
good before, then, as Camero well argues somewhere, God’s goodness 
would depend upon his loving himself; he was good because he 
loved himself, and was not good till he loved himself; whereas, in- 
deed, God’s loving himself, doth not make him good, but supposeth 
him good: he was good in the order of nature before he loved him- 
self; and his being good was the ground of his loving himself, be- 
cause, as was said before, if there were anything better than God, 
God would love that; for it is inconsistent with the nature of God 
and infinite goodness not to love that which is good, and not to love 
that supremely which is the supreme good. Further to understand it, 
you may consider, if the question be asked, why God loves himself? 
you would think it a reasonable answer to say, because he is good. 
But if the question be asked, why God is good? you would think 
that answer, because he loves himself, would be destitute of reason ; 
but the true answer would be, because his nature is so, and he could 
not be God if he were not good: therefore God’s goodness is in or- 
der of our conception before his self-love, and not his self-love be- 
fore his goodness; so the moral things God commands, are good in 
themselves before God commands them; and such, that if God 
should command the contrary, it would openly speak him evil and 
unrighteous. Abstract from Scripture, and weigh things in your own 
reason; could you conceive God good, if he should command a.crea- 
ture not to love him? could you preserve the notion of a good nature 
in him, if he did command murder, adultery, tyranny, and cutting 
of throats? You would wonder to what purpose he made the world, 
and framed it for society, if such things were ordered, that should 
deface all comeliness of society: the moral commands given in the 
word, appeared of themselves very beautiful to mere reason, that 
had no knowledge of the written law; they are good, and because 
they are so, his goodness had moved his sovereign authority strictly 
to enjoin them. Now this goodness, whereby he cannot oblige a 

rp “As a heathen,” Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. 22, p. 220. Od yap Oéuic Aut BotAccOau 


undo TL TO KGAALOTONS 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 341 


creature to anything that is evil, speaks him highly worthy of our 
observance, and our disobedience to his law to be full of inconceiv 
able malignity : that is the last thing. 

Second Use is of comfort. He is a good without mixture, good 
without weariness—none good but God, none good purely, none 
good inexhaustibly, but God; because he is good, we may, upon our 
speaking, expect his instruction; ‘‘ Good is the Lord, therefore will 
he teach sinners in his way” (Ps. xxv. 8). Huis goodness makes him 
stoop to be the tutor to those worms that he prostrate before him ; 
and though they are sinners full of filth, he drives them not from his 
school, nor denies them his medicines, if they apply themselves to 
him as a physician. He is good in removing the punishment due to 
our crimes, and good in bestowing benefits not due to our merits; 
because he is good, penitent believers may expect forgiveness ; ‘Thou, 
Lord, art good, and ready to forgive” (Ps. Ixxxvi. 5). He acts not 
according to the rigor of the law, but willingly grants his pardon to - 
those that fly into the arms of the Mediator ; his goodness makes him 
more ready to forgive, than our necessities make us desirous to en- 
joy; he charged not upon Job his impatient expressions in cursing 
the day of his birth; his goodness passed that over in silence, and 
extols him for speaking the thing that is right, right in the main, 
when he charges his friends for not speaking of him the thing that 
is right, as his servant Job had done (Job xlu. 7). He isso good, 
that if we offer the least thing sincerely, he will graciously receive 
it; 1f we have not a lamb to offer, a pigeon or turtle shall be accepted 
upon his altar; he stands not upon costly presents, but sincerely ten- 
dered services. All conditions are sweetened by it; whatsoever any 
in the world enjoy, is from a redundancy of this goodness; but 
whatsoever a good man enjoys, is from a propriety in this goodness. 

1. Hereis comfort in our addresses to him. If he be a fountain and 
sea of goodness, he cannot be weary of doing good, no more than a 
fountain or sea are of flowing. All goodness delights to communi- 
cate itself; infinite goodness hath then an infinite delight in express- 
ing itself; itis a part of his goodness not to be weary of showing 
it; he can never, then, be weary of being solicited for the effusions 
of it; uf he rejoices over his people to do them good, he will rejoice 
in any opportunities offered to him to honor his goodness, and gladly 
meet with a fit subject for it; he therefore delightsin prayer. Never 
can we so delight in addressing, as he doth in imparting ; he delights 
more in our prayers than we can ourselves; goodness is not pleased 
with shyness. ‘Io what purpose did his immense bounty bestow his 
Son upon us, but that we should be “accepted” both in our persons 
and petitions (Eph.i. 6)? ‘His eyes are upon the righteous, and 
his ears are open to their cry” (Ps. xxxiv. 15); he fixes the eye of 
his goodness upon them, and opens the ears of his goodness for them ; 
he is pleased to behold them, and pleased to listen to them, as if he 
had no pleasure in anything else; he loves to be sought to, to give 
a vent to his bounty; “ Acquaint thyself with God, and thereby 
good shall come unto thee” (Job xxii. 21). The word signifies, to 
accustom ourselves to God; the more we accustom ourselves in 
speaking, the more he will accustom himself in giving; he loves not 


842 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


to keep his goodness close under lock and key, as men do their 
treasures. If we knock, he opens his exchequer (Matt. vii. 7); his 
goodness is as flexible to our importunities, as his power is invincible 
by the arm of a silly worm; he thinks his liberality honored by be- 
ing applied to, and your address to be a recompense for his expense. 
There is no reason to fear, since he hath so kindly invited us, but he 
will as heartily welcome us; the nature of goodness is to compassion- 
ate and communicate, to pity and relieve, and that with a heartiness 
and cheerfulness ; man is weary of being often solicited, because he hath 
a finite, not a bottomless, goodness: he gives sometimes to be rid of 
his suppliant, not to encourage him to asecond approach. But every 
experience God gives us of his bounty, is a motive to solicit him 
afresh, and a kind of obligation he hath laid upon himself to “ renew 
it” (1 Sam. xvii, 87): it is one part of his goodness that it is bound- 
less and bottomless; we need not fear the wasting of it, nor any 
weariness in him to bestow it. The stock cannot be spent, and infi- 
nite kindness can never become niggardly; when we have enjoyed 
it, there is still an infinite ocean in Him to refresh us, and as full 
streams as ever to supply us. What an encouragement have we to 
draw near to God! We run in our straits to those that we think 
have most good will, as well as power to relieve and protect us. The 
oftener we come to him, and the nearer we approach to him, the 
more of his influences we shall feel: as the nearer the sun, the more 
of its heat insinuates itself into us. The greatness of God, joined 
with his goodness, hath more reason to encourage our approach to 
him, than our flight from him, because his greatness never goes 
unattended with his goodness; and if we were not so good, he would | 
not be so great in the apprehensions of any creature. How may his 
goodness, in the great gift of his Son, encourage us to apply to him: 
since he hath set him as a day’s-man between himself and us, and 
appointed him an Advocate to present our requests for us, and speed 
them at the throne of grace; and he never leaves till Divine good- 
ness subscribes a fiat to our believing and just petitions ! | 
2. Here is comfort in afflictions. What can we fear from the con- 
duct of Infinite Goodness? Can his hand be heavy upon those that 
are humble before him? ‘They are the hands of Infinite Power in- 
deed, but there is not any motion of it upon his people, but is or- 
dered by a goodness as infinite as his power, which will not suffer 
any affliction to be too sharp or too long. By what ways soever he 
conveys grace to us here, and prepares us for glory hereafter, they 
are good, and those are the good things he hath chiefly obliged himself 
to give (Ps. lxxxiv. 11): “ Grace and glory” will he “give, and no 
good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” This 
David comforted himself with, in that which his devout soul ac- 
counted the greatest calamity, his absence from the courts and house 
of God (ver. 2). Not an ill will, but a good will, directs his scourges ; 
he is not an idle spectator of our combats; his thoughts are fuller of 
kindness than ours, in any case, can be of trouble: and because he 
is good, he wills the best good in everything he acts; in exercising 
virtue, or correcting vice. There is no affliction without some ap- 
parent mixtures of goodness; when he speaks how he had smitten 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 343 


Israel (Jer. ii. 30), he presently adds (ver. 31), “Have I been a wil- 
derness to Israel, a land of darkness?” Though he led them through 
a desert, yet he was not a desert to them; he'was no land of dark- 
ness to them; while they marched through a land of barrenness, he 
was a caterer to provide them “manna,” and a place of “broad 
rivers” and streams. How often hath Divine goodness made our 
afflictions our consolations; our diseases, our medicines, and his gen- 
tle strokes, reviving cordials! How doth he provide for us above 
our deserts, even while he doth punish us beneath our merits! Di- 
vine goodness can no more mean ill, than Divine wisdom can be 
mistaken in its end, er Divine power overruled in its actions. 
‘‘ Charity thinks no evil” (1 Cor. xiii. 5); charity in the stream doth 
not, much less doth charity in the fountain. To be afflicted by a 
hand of goodness hath something comfortable in it, when to be 
afflicted by an evil hand is very odious. Elijah, who was loth to 
die by the hand of a whorish idolatrous Jezebel, was very desirous 
to die by the hand of God (1 Kings, xix. 2—4). He accounted it a 
misery to have died by her hand, who hated him, and had nothing 
but cruelty ; and, therefore, fled from her, when he wished for death, 
as a desirable thing by the hand of that God who had been gocd to 
him, and could not but be good in whatsoever he acted. 

8. The third comfort flowing from this doctrine of the goodness 
of God, is, it is a ground of assurance of happiness. If God be so 
good, that nothing is better, and loves himself, as he is good, he can- 
not be wanting in love to those that resemble his nature, and imitate 
his goodness: he cannot but love his own image of goodness; 
wherever he finds it, he cannot but be bountiful to it; for it is im- 
possible there can be any love to any object, without wishing well 
to it, and doing well for it. If the soul loves God as its chiefest 
good, God will love the soul as his pious servant: as he hath offered 
to them the highest allurements, so he will not withhold the choicest 
communications. Goodness cannot be a deluding thing; it cannot 
consist with the nobleness and largeness of this perfection to invite 
the creature to him, and leave the creature empty of him when it 
comes. It is inconsistent with this perfection to give the creature a 
knowledge of himself, and a desire of enjoyment larger than that 
knowledge; a desire to know, and enjoy him perpetually, yet never 
intend to bestow an eternal communication of himself upon it. The 
nature of man was erected by the goodness of God, but with an en- 
larged desire for the highest good, and a capacity of enjoying it. 
Can goodness be thought to be deceitful, to frustrate its own work, be 
tired with its own effusions, to let a gracious soul groan under its 
burden, and never resolve to ease him of it; to see delightfully the 
aspirings of the creature to another state, and resolve never to admit 
him to a happy issue of those desires? It is not agreeable to this 
inconceivable perfection to be unconcerned in the longings of his 
creature, since their first longings were placed in them by that good- 
ness which is so free from mocking the creature, or falling short of 
its well-crounded expectations or desires, that it infinitely exceeds 
them. If man had continued in innocence, the goodness of God, 
without question, would have continued him in happiness: and, 


344 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


since he hath had so much goodness to restore man, would it not be 
dishonorable to that goodness to break his own conditions, and de- 
feat the believing creature of happiness, after it hath complied with 
his terms? He isa believer’s God in covenant, and is a God in the 
utmost extent of this attribute, as well as of any other; and, there- 
fore, will not communicate mean and shallow benefits, but according 
to the grandeur of it, sovereign and divine, such as the gilt of a 
happy immortality. Since he had no obligation upon him, to make 
any promise, but the sweetness of his own nature, the same is as 
strong upon him to make all the words of his grace good ; they cannot 
be invalid in any one tittle of them as long as his nature remains the 
same; and his goodness cannot be diminished without the impairing 
of his Godhead, since it is inseparable from it. Divine goodness will 
notlet any man serve God for nought; he hath promised our weak obe- 
dience more than any man in his right wits can say it merits (Matt. 
x. 42): “ A cup of cold water shall not lose its reward.” He wall 
manifest our good actions as he gave so high a testimony to Job, in 
the face of the devil, his accuser: it will not only be the happiness 
of the soul, but of the body, the whole man, since soul and body were 
in conjunction in the acts of righteousness; it consists not with the 
goodness of God to reward the one, and to let the other lie in the 
ruins ofits first nothing : to bestow joy upon the one for its being prin- 
cipal, and leave the other without any sentiments of joy, that was in- 
strumental in those good works, both commanded and approved by 
God: he that had the goodness to pity our original dust, will not 
want a goodness to advance it: and if we put off our bodies, it is 
but afterwards to put them on repaired and fresher. From this 
goodness, the upright may expect all the happiness their nature 1s 
capable of. 

4, It is a ground of comfort in the midst of public dangers. This 
hath more sweetness in it to support us, than the malice of enemies 
hath to deject us; because he is “ good,” he is ‘‘a stronghold in the 
day of trouble” (Nah. i. 7). If his goodness extends to all his crea- 
tures, it will much more extend to those that honor him: if the earth 
be full of his goodness, that part of heaven which he hath upon earth 
shall not be empty of it. He hath a goodness often to deliver the 
righteous, and a justice to put the wicked in his stead (Prov. xi. 8). 
When his people have been under the power of their enemies, he 
hath changed the scene, and put the enemies under the power of his 
people: he hath clapped upon them the same bolts which they did 

upon his servants. How comfortable is this goodness that hath yet 
maintained us in the midst of dangers, preserved us in the mouth of 
lions, quenched kindled fire; hitherto rescued us from designed ruin. 
subtilly hatched, and supported us in the midst of men very passion- 
ate for our destruction; how hath this watchful goodness been a 
sanctuary to us in the midst of an upper hell! 

Third Use is of exhortation. 

1. How should we endeavor after the enjoyment of God as good! 
How earnestly should we desire him! As there is no other good- 
ness worthy of our supreme love, so there is no other goodness worthy 
our most ardent thirst. Nothing deserves the name of a desirable 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 845 


good, but as it tends to the attainment of this: here we must pitch 
our desires, which otherwise will terminate in nullities or incon 
eeivable disturbances. 

(1.) Consider, nothing but good can be the object of a rational 
appetite. The will cannot direct its motion to anything under the 
notion of evil, evil in itself, or evil to it; whatsoever courts it must 
present itself in the quality of a good in its own nature, or in its 
present circumstances to the present state and condition of the de- 
sire; it will not else touch or affect the will. This is the language 
of that faculty: “ Who will show me any good?” (Ps. iv. 6), and 
good is as inseparably the object of the will’s motion, as truth is of 
the understanding’s inquiry. Whatsoever a man would allure 
another to comply with, he must propose to the person under the 
notion of some beneficialness to him in point of honor, profit, or 
pleasure. To act after this manner is the proper character of a 
rational creature; and though that which is evil is often embraced 
instead of that which is good, and what we entertain as conducing 
to our felicity proves our misfortune, yet that is from our ignorance, 
and not from a formal choice of it as evil; for what evil is chosen 
_ it is not possible to choose under the conception of evil, but under 

the appearance of a good, though it be not so in reality. It is in- 
separable from the wills of all men to propose to themselves that 
which in the opinion and judgment of their understandings or im 
agination is good, though they often mistake and cheat themselves. 

(2.) Since that good is the object of a rational appetite, the purest, 
best, and most universal good, such as God 1s, ought to be most 
sought after. Since good only is the object of a rational appetite, 
all the motions of our souls should be carried to the first and best 
good: a real good is most desirable; the greatest excellency of the 
creatures cannot speak them so, since, by the corruption of man, 
they are “subjected to vanity” (Rom. viii. 20). God is the most ex- 
cellent good without any shadow; a real something without that 
nothing which every creature hath in its nature (Isa. xl. EO haesee 
perfect good can only give us content: the best goodness in the 
creature is but slender and imperfect; had not the venom of cor- 
ruption infused a vanity into it, the make of it speaks it finite, and 
the best qualities in it are bounded, and cannot give satisfaction to 
a rational appetite which bears in its nature an imitation of Divine 
infinitenegss, and therefore can never find an eternal rest in mean 
trifles, God is above the imperfection of all creatures; creatures 
are but drops of goodness, at best but shallow streams ; God is like 
a teeming ocean, that can fill the largest as well as the narrowest 
creck, He hath an accumulative goodness; several creatures answer 
several necessities, but one God can answer all our wants: he hath 
an universal fulness, to overtop our universal emptiness: he con- 
tains in himself the sweetness of all other goods, and holds in his 
bosom plentifully what creatures have in their natures sparingly. 
Creatures are uncertain goods; as they begin to exist, So they may 
cease to be; they may be gone with a breath, they will certainly 
languish if God blows upon them (Isa. xl. eb the same breath that 
raised them can blast them: but who can.rifle God of the least part 


346 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of his excellency? Mutability is inherent in the nature of every 
creature, as a creature. All sublunary things are as gourds, that re- 
fresh us one moment with their presence, and the next fret us with 
their absence; like fading flowers, strutting to day, and drooping 
to-morrow (Isa. xl. 6): while we possess them, we cannot clip their 
wings, that may carry them away from us, and may make us vainly 
seek what we thought we firmly held. But God is as permanent a 
good as he is a real one: he hath wings to fly to them that seek him, 
but no wings to fly from them forever, and leave them. God is an 
universal good; that which is good to one may be evil to another; 
what is desirable by one may be refused as inconvenient for another: 
but God being an universal, unstained good, is useful for all, con- 
venient to the natures of all but such as will continue in enmity 
against him. There is nothing in God can displease a soul that 
desires to please him; when we are in darkness, he is a light to 
scatter it; when we are in want, he hath riches to relieve us; when 
we are in spiritual death, he is a Prince of life to deliver us; when 
we are defiled, he is holiness to purify us: it 1s in vain to fix our 
hearts anywhere but on him, in the desire of whom there is a delight, 
and in the enjoyment of whom there is an inconceivable pleasure. 
(3.) He is most to be sought after, since all things else that are 
desirable had their goodness from him. If anything be desirable 
because of its goodness, God is much more desirable because of his, 
since all things are good by a participation, and nothing good but 
by his print upon it: as what being creatures have was derived to 
them by God, so what goodness they are possessed with they were 
furnished with it by God; all goodness flowed from him, and all 
created goodness is summed up in him. The streams should not 
terminate our appetite without aspiring to the fountain. If the 
waters in the channel, which receive mixture, communicate a plea- 
sure, the taste of the fountain must be much more delicious; that 
original Perfection of all things hath an inconceivable beauty above 
those things it hath framed. Since those things live not by their 
own strength, nor nourish us by their own liberality, but by the 
“word of God” (Matt. iv. 4), that God that speaks them into life, 
and speaks them into usefulness, should be most ardently desired as 
the best. If the sparkling glory of the visible heavens delight us, 
and the beauty and bounty of the earth please and refresh us, what 
should be the language of our souls upon those views and tastes but 
that of the Psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there 
is none upon earth that I can desire beside thee” (Ps. xxii. 25). 
No greater good can possibly be desired, and no less good should be 
ardently desired. As he is the supreme good, so we should bear that 
regard to him as supremely, and above all, to thirst for him: as he 
is good, he is the object of desire; as the choicest and first goodness, 
he is desirable with the greatest vehemency. ‘Give me children, 
or else I die” (Gen. xxx. 1), was an uncomely speech; the one was 
granted, and the other inflicted; she had children, but the last cost 
her her life: but, Give me God, or I will not be content, is a gracious 
speech, wherein we cannot miscarry; all that God demands of us is, 
that we should long for him, and look for our happiness only in 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 8347 


him. That is the first thing, endeavor after the enjoyment of God 
as good. 

5. Often meditate on the goodness of God. What was man pro- 
duced for, but to settle his thoughts upon this? What should have 
been Adam’s employment in innocence, but to read over all the lines 
of nature, and fix his contemplations on that good hand that drew 
them? What is man endued with reason for, above all other ani- 
mals, but to take notice of this goodness spread over all the creatures, 
which they themselves, though they felt it, could not have such a 
sense of as to make answerable returns to their Benefactor? Can 
we satisfy ourselves in being spectators of it, and enjoyers of it, only 
in such a manner as the brutes are? The beasts behold things as 
well as we, they feel the warm beams of this goodness as well as we, 
but without any reflection upon the Author of them. Shall Divine 
blessings meet with no more from us but a brutish view and be- 
holding of them? What is more just, than to spend a thought upon 
Him who hath enlarged his hand in so many benefits to us? Are 
we indebted to any more than we are to him? Why should we 
send our souls to visit anything more than him in his works? That 
we are able to meditate on him is a part of his goodness to us, who 
hath bestowed that capacity upon us; and, if we will not, it is a 
ereat part of our ingratitude. Can anything more delightful enter 
into us, than that of the kind and gracious disposition of that God 
who first brought us out of the abyss of an unhappy nothing, and 
hath hitherto spread his wings over us? Where can we meet with 
a nobler object than Divine goodness? and what nobler work can 
be practised by us than to consider it? What is more sensible in all 
the operations of his hands than his skill, as they are considered in 
themselves, and his goodness, as they are considered in relation to 
us? It is strange that we should miss the thoughts of it; that we 
should look upon this earth, and everything in it, and yet overlook 
that which it is most full of, wiz. Divine goodness (Ps. xxxii. 5); it 
runs through the whole web of the world; all is framed and diversi- 
fied by goodness; it is one entire single goodness, which appears in 
various garbs and dresses in every part of the creation. Can we 
turn our eyes inward, and send our eyes outward, and see nothing 
of a Divinity in both worthy of our deepest and seriousest thoughts? 
Is there anything in the world we can behold, but we see his bounty, 
since nothing was made but is one way or other beneficial to us? 
Can we think of our daily food, but we must have some reflecting 
thoughts on our great Caterer? Can the sweetness of the creature 
to our palate obscure the sweetness of the Provider to our minds? 
It is strange that we should be regardless of that wherein every 
creature without us, and every sense within us and about us, is a 
tutor to instruct us! Is it not reason we should think of the times 
wherein we were nothing, and from thence run back to a never-be- 
oun eternity, and view ourselves in the thoughts of that goodness, 
to be in time brought forth upon this stage, as we are at present? 
Can we consider but one act of our understandings, but one thought, 
one blossom, one spark of our souls mounting upwards, and not re- 
flect upon the goodness of God to us, who, in that faculty that 


348 CHARNOOK GN THE ATTRIBUTES. 


sparkles out rational thoughts, has advanced us to a nobler state, 
and endued us with a nobler principle, than all the creatures we see 
on earth, except those of our own rank and kind? Can we consider 
but one foolish thought, one sinful act, and reflect upon the guilt 
and filth of it, and not behold goodness in sparing us, and miracles 
of goodness in sending his Son to die for us, for the expiation of it? 
This perfection cannot well be out of our thoughts, or at least it is 
horrible it should, when it is writ in every line of the creation, and 
in a legible rubric, in bloody letters, in the cross of his Son. Let us 
think with ourselves, how often he hath multiplied his blessings, 
when we did deserve his wrath! how he hath sent one unexpected 
benefit upon the heel of another, to bring us with a swift pace the 
tidings of good-will to us! how often hath he delivered us from a 
disease that had the arrows of death in its hand ready to pierce us! 
how often hath he turned our fears into joys, and our distempers into 
promoters of our felicity! how often hath he mated a temptation, 
sent seasonable supplies in the midst of a sore distress, and prevented 
many dangers which we could not be so sensible of, because we were, 
in a great measure, ignorant of them! How should we meditate 
upon his goodness to our souls, in preventing some sins, in pardon- 
ing others, in darting upon us the knowledge of his gospel, and of 
himself, in the face of his Son Christ! This seems to stick much 
upon the spirit of Paul, since he doth so often sprinkle his epistles 
with the titles of the “grace of God, riches of grace, unsearchable 
riches of God, riches of glory,” and cannot satisfy himself, with the 
extolling of it. Certainly, we should bear upon our heart a deep 
and quick sense of this perfection; as it was the design of God to 
manifest it, so it would be acceptable to God for us to have a sense 
of it: a dull receiver of his blessings is no less nauseous to him than 
a dull dispenser of his alms; he loves a ‘(cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 1x. 
7); he doth himself what he loves in others; he is cheerful in giv- 
ing, and he loves we should be serious in thinking of him, and have 
a right apprehension and sense of his goodness. ) 

(1.) A right sense of his goodness would dispose us to an ingenu 
ous worship of God. It would damp our averseness to any act of 
religion; what made David so resolute and ready to ‘‘worship to- 
wards his holy temple” but the sense of his ‘loving kindness?” (Ps. 
exxxviii. 2). This would render him always in our mind a worthy 
object of our devotion, a stable prop of our confidence. We should 
then adore him, when we consider him as ‘‘ our God,” and ourselves 
as “the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand” (Ps. xev. 
7): we should send up prayers with strong faith and feeling, and’ 
praises with great joy and pleasure. The sense of his goodness 
would make us love him, and our love to him would quicken our 
adoration of him; but if we regard not this, we shall have no mind 
to think of him, no mind to act anything towards him; we may 
tremble at his presence, but not heartily worship him; we shall 
rather look upon him as a tyrant, and think no other affection due 
to him than what we reserve for an oppressor, #7. hatred and ill- 
will. 

(2.) A sense of it will keep us humble. A sense of it would effect 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 349 


that for which itself was intended; wz. bring us to a repentance for 
our crimes, and not suffer us to harden ourselves against him. When 
we should deeply consider how he hath made the sun to shine upon 
us, and his rain to fall upon the earth for our support; the one to 
supple the earth, and the other to assist the juice of it to bring forth 
fruits; how would it reflect upon us our ill requitals, and make us 
hang down our heads before him in a low posture, pleasing to him, 
and advantageous to ourselves! What would the first charge be 
upon ourselves, but what Moses brings in his expostulation against 
the Israelites (Deut. xxxii. 6): “Do I thus requite the Lord?” 
What is this goodness for me, who am so much below him; for me, 
who have so much incensed him; for me, who have so much abused 
what he hath allowed? It would bring to remembrance the horror 
of our crimes, and set us a blushing before him, when we should 
consider the multitude of his benefits, and our unworthy behaviour, 
that hath not constrained him even against the inclination of his 
goodness, to punish us: how little should we plead for a further 
liberty in sin, or palliate our former faults! When we set Divine 
goodness in one column, and our transgressions in another, and com- 
pare together their several items, it would fill us with a deep con- 
sciousness of our own guilt, and divest us of any worth of our own 
in our approaches to him; it would humble us, that we cannot love 
so obliging a God as much as he deserves to be loved by us; it 
would make us humble before men. Who would be proud of a 
mere gift which he knows he hath not merited? How ridiculous 
would that servant be, that should be proud of a rich livery, which 
is a badge of his service, not a token of his merit, but of his master’s 
magnificence and bounty, which, though he wear this day, he may 
be stripped of to-morrow, and be turned out of his master’s family ! 
(8.) A sense of the Divine goodness would make us faithful to him. 
The goodness of God obligeth us to serve him, not to offend him; 
the freeness of his goodness should make us more ready to contribute 
to the advancement of his glory. When we consider the benefits of 
a friend proceed out of kindness to us, and not out of self ends and 
vain applause, it works more upon us, and makes us more careful of 
the honor of such a person. It is a pure bounty God hath manifest- 
ed in creation and providence, which could not be for himself, who, 
being blessed forever, wanted nothing from us: it was not to draw 
a profit from us, but to impart an advantage to us; ‘‘Our goodness 
extends not to him” (Ps. xvi. 2). The service of the benefactor is 
but a rational return for benefits; whence Nehemiah aggravates the 
sins of the Jews (Neh. ix. 35): “They have not served thee in thy 
great goodness that thou gavest them ;” 7. e. which thou didst freely 
bestow upon them. How should we dare to spend upon our lusts 
that which we possess, if we considered by whose’ liberality we came 
by it? how should we dare to be unfaithful in the goods he hath 
made us trustees of? A deep sense of Divine goodness will enno- 
ble the creature, and make it act for the most glorious and noble 
end; it would strike Satan’s temptation dead at a blow; it would 
pull off the false mask and vizor from what he presents to us, to 
draw us from the service of our Benefactor; we could not, with a 


350 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


sense of this, think him kinder to us than God hath, and will be, 
which is the great motive of men to join hands with him, and turn 
their backs upon God. 

(4.) A sense of the Divine goodness would make us patient under 
our miseries. A deep sense of this would make us give God the 
honor of his goodness in whatsover he doth, though the reason of 
his actions be not apparent to us, nor the event and issue of his pro- 
ceedings foreseen by us. It is a stated case, that goodness can never 
intend ill, but designs good in all its acts ‘to them that love God” 
(Rom. viii. 28): nay, he always designs the best; when he bestows 
anything upon his people, he sees it best they should have it; and 
when he removes anything from them, he sees it best they should 
lose it. When we have lost a thing we loved, and refuse to be com- 
forted, a sense of this perfection, which acts God in all, would keep 
us from misjudging our sufferings, and measuring the intention of 
the hand that sent them, by the sharpness of what we feel. What 
patient, fully persuaded of the affection of the physician, would not 
value him, though that which is given to purge out the humors, 
racks his bowels? When we lose what we love, perhaps it was 
some outward lustre tickled our apprehensions, and we did not see 
the viper we would have harmed ourselves by; but God seeing it, 
snatched it from us, and we mutter as if he had been cruel, and de- 
prived us of the good we imagined, when he was kind to us, and 
freed us from the hurt we should certainly have felt. We should 
regard that which in goodness he takes from us, at no other rate 
than some gilded poison and lurking venom; the sufferings of men, 
though upon high provocations, are often followed with rich mercies, 
and many times are intended as preparations for greater goodness. 
When God utters that rhetoric of his bowels, “ How shall I give 
thee up, O Ephraim, I will not execute the fierceness of my anger |” 
(Hos. xi. 8), he intended them mercy in their captivity, and would 
prepare them by it, to walk after the Lord. And it is likely the 
posterity of those ten tribes were the first that ran to God, upon the 
publishing the gospel in the places where they lived; he doth not 
take away himself when he takes away outward comforts; while he 
snatche‘h away the rattles we play with, he hath a breast in himself 
for us to suck. he consideration of his goodness would dispose us 
to a composed frame of spirit. If we are sick, it is goodness, it is a 
disease, and not a hell. It is goodness, that it is a cloud, and not a 
total darkness. What if he transfers from us what we have? he 
takes no more than what his goodness first imparted to us; and 
never takes so much from his people as his goodness leaves them : 
if he strips them of their lives, he leaves them their souls, with those 
faculties he furnished them with at first, and removes them from 
those houses of clay to a richer mansion. The time of our sufferings 
here, were it the whole course of our life, bears not the proportion 
of a moment to that endless eternity wherein he hath designed to 
manifest his goodness to us. The consideration of Divine goodness 
would teach us to draw a calm even from storms, and distil balsam 
from rods. If the reproofs of the righteous be an excellent oil (Ps. 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 851 


exly. 5), we should not think the corrections of a good God to have 
a less virtue. 

(5.) A sense of the Divine goodness would mount us above the 
world. It would damp our appetites after meaner things; we should 
look upon the world not as a God, but a gift from God, and never 
think the present better than the Donor. We should never lie soaking 
in muddy puddles were we always filled with a sense of the richness 
and clearness of this Fountain, wherein we might bathe ourselves ; 
little petty particles of good would give us no content, when we 
were sensible of such an unbounded ocean. Infinite goodness, rightly 
apprehended, would dull our desires after other things, and sharpen 
them with a keener edge after tuat which is best of all. How earn- 
estly do we long for the presence of a friend, of whose good will 
towards us we have full experience. 

(6.) It would check any motions of envy: it would make us joy 
in the prosperity of good men, and hinder us from envying the out- 
ward felicity of the wicked. We should not dare with an evil eye 
to censure his good hand (Matt. xx. 15), but approve of what he 
thinks fit to do, both in the matter of his liberality and the subjects 
he chooseth for it.. Though if the disposal were in our hands, we 
should not imitate him, as not thinking them subjects fit for our 
bounty; yet since it is in his hands, we be to approve of his actions 
and not have an ill will towards him for his goodness, or towards 
those he is pleased to make the subject of it. Since all his doles are 
given to “invite man to repentance” (Rom. 1. 4), to envy them those 
goods God hath bestowed upon them, is to envy God the glory of his 
own goodness, and them the felicity those things might move them 
to aspire to; it is to wish God more contracted, and thy neighbor 
more miserable: but a deep sense of his sovereign goodness would 
make us rejoice in any marks of it upon others, and move us to bless 
him instead of censuring him. 

(7.) It would make us thankful. What can be the most proper, 
the most natural reflection, when we behold the most magnificent 
characters he hath imprinted upon our souls; the conveniency of the 
members he hath compacted in our bodies, but a praise of him? 
Such motion had David upon the first consideration: “I will praise 
thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Ps. cxxxix. 14), 
What could be the most natural reflection, when we behold the rich 
prerogatives of our natures above other creatures, the provision he 
hath made for us for our delight in the beauties of heaven, for our 
support in the creatures on earth? What can reasonably be expected 
from uncorrupted man, to be the first motion of his soul, but an ex- 
tolling the bountiful hand of the invisible donor, whoever he be? 
This would make us venture at some endeavors of a grateful ac- 
knowledgment, though we should despair of rendering anything pro- 
vortionable to the greatness of the benefit; and such an acknowledg- 
ment of our own weakness would be an acceptable part of our 
vratitude. Without a due and deep sense of Divine goodness, our 
praise of it, and thankfulness for it, will be but cold, formal, and 
customary ; our tongues may bless him, and our heart slight him: 
and this will lead us to the third exhortation: 


852 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


8. Which is that of thankfulness for Divine goodness. The abso- 
lute goodness of God, as it is the excellency of his nature, is the 
object of praise: the relative goodness of God, as he is our benefactor, 
is the object of thankfulness. This was always a debt due from man 
to God; he had obligations in the time of his integrity, and was 
then to render it; he is not less, but more obliged to it in the state 
of corruption; the benefits being the greater, by how much the more 
unworthy he is of them by reason of his revolt. The bounty be- 
stowed upon an enemy that merits the contrary, ought to be received 
with a greater resentment than that bestowed on a friend, who is not 
unworthy of testimonies of respect. Gratitude to God is the duty 
of every creature that hath a sense of itself; the more excellent being 
any enjoy the more devout ought to be the acknowledgment. How 
often doth David stir up, not only himself, but summon all creatures, 
even the insensible ones, to join in the concert! He calls to the 
“ deeps, fire, hail, snow, mountains and hills,” to bear a part in this 
work of praise (Ps. exlviii); not that they are able to do it actively, 
but to show that man is to call in the whole creation to assist him 
passively, and should have so much charity to all creatures, as to re- 
ceive what they offer, and so much affection to God, as to present to 
him what he receives from him. Snow and hail cannot bless and 
praise God, but man ought to praise God for those things wherein 
there is a mixture of trouble and inconvenience, something to molest 
our sense, as well as something that improves the earth for fruit. 
This God requires of us: for this he instituted several offerings, and 
required a little portion of fruits to be presented to him, as an ac- 
knowledgment they held the whole from his bounty. And the end 
of the festival days among the Jews was to revive the memory of 
those signal acts wherein his power for them, and his goodness to 
them, had been extraordinarily evident; it is no more but our mouths. 
to praise him, and our hand to obey him, that he exacts at our hands. 
He commands us not to expend what he allows us in the erecting 
stately temples to his honor; all the coin he requires to be paid with 
for his expense is the “ offering of thanksgiving” (Ps. 1.14): and this 
we ought to do as much as we can, since we cannot do it as much as 
he merits, for ‘“‘ who can show forth all his praise?” (Ps. evi. 2.) If 
we have the fruit of his goodness, it is fit he should have the “ fruit 
of our lips” (Heb. xiii. 15): the least kindness should inflame our 
souls with a kindly resentment. Though some of his benefits have a 
brighter, some a darker, aspect towards us, yet they all come from 
this common spring; his goodness shines in all; there are the foot- 
steps of goodness in the least, as well as the smiles of goodness in 
the greatest; the meanest therefore is not to pass without a regard of 
the Author. As the glory of God is more illustrious in some crea- 
tures than in others, yet it glitters in all, and the lowest as well as 
the highest administers matter of praise; but they are not only little 
things, but the choicer favors he has bestowed upon us. How much 
doth it deserve our acknowledgment, that he should contrive our re- 
covery, when we had plotted our ruin! that when he did from eter- 
nity behold the crimes wherewith we would incense him, he should 
not, according to the rights of justice, cast us into hell, but prize us at 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 353 


the rate of the blood and life of his only Son, in value above the 
blood of men and lives of angels! How should we bless that God, 
that we have yet a gospel among us, that we are not driven into the 
utmost regions, that we can attend upon him in the face of the sun, 
and not forced to the secret obscurities of the night! Whatsoever 
we enjoy, whatsoever we receive, we must own him as the Donor, 
and read his hand init. Rob him not of any praise to give to an 
instrument. No man hath wherewithal to do us good, nor a heart 
to do us good, nor opportunities of benefitting us without him. 
When the cripple received the soundness of his limbs from Peter, he 
praised the hand that sent it, not the hand that brought it (Acts iii 
6): he “praised God” (ver. 8). When we want anything that is 
good, let the goodness of Divine nature move us to David’s practice, 
to “thirst after God” (Ps. xli. 1): and when we feel the motions of 
his goodness to us, let us imitate the temper of the same holy man 
(Ps. cil. 2): “ Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his 
benefits.” It is an unworthy carriage to deal with him as a traveller 
doth with a fountain, kneel down to drink of it when he is thirsty, 
and turn his back upon it, and perhaps never think of it more after 
he is satisfied. 

4, And, lastly, Imitate this goodness of God. If his goodness 
hath such an influence upon us as to make us love him, it will also 
move us with an ardent zeal to imitate him in it. Christ makes this 
use from the doctrine of Divine goodness (Matt. v. 44, 45): “Do 
good to them that hate you, that you may be the children of your 
Father which is in heaven; for he makes his sun to rise on the evil 
and on the good.” As holiness is a resemblance of God’s purity, so 
charity is a resemblance of God’s goodness; and this our Saviour 
calls perfection (ver. 48): ‘Be ye therefore perfect, even as your 
Father, which is in heaven, is perfect.” As God would not be a per- 
fect God without goodness, so neither can any be a perfect Christian 
without kindness; charity and love being the splendor and loveliness 
of all Christian graces, as goodness is the splendor and loveliness of 
all Divine attributes. This and holiness are ordered in the Scripture 
to be the grand patterns of our imitation. Imitate the goodness of 
God in two things. 

(1.) In relieving and assisting others in distress. Let our heart be 
as large in the capacity of creatures, as God’s is in the capacity of a 
Creator. A large heart from him to us, and a strait heart from us to 
others, will not suit: let us not think any so far below us as to be 
unworthy of our care, since God thinks none that are infinitely dis- 
tant from him too mean for his. His infinite glory mounts him 
above the creature, but his infinite goodness stoops him to the mean- 
est works of his hands. As he lets not the transgressions of pros- 
perity pass without punishment, so he lets not the distress of his af- 
flicted people pass him without support. Shall God provide for the 
ease of beasts, and shall not we have some tenderness towards those 
that are of the same blood with ourselves, and have as good blood 
to boast of as runs in the veins of the mightiest monarch on earth ; 
and as mean, and as little as they are, can lay claim to as ancient a 
pedigree as the stateliest prince in the world, who cannot ascend to 

VOL. 1.—23 


854 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


ancestors beyond Adam? Shall we glut ourselves with Divine be- 
neficence to us, and wear his livery only on our own backs, forget- 
ting the afflictions of some dear Joseph; when God, who hath an 
unblemished felicity in his own nature, looks out of himself to view 
and relieve the miseries of poor creatures? Why hath God increased 
the doles of his treasures to some more than others? Was it merely 
for themselves, or rather that they might have a bottom to attain the 
honor of imitating him? Shall we embezzle his goods to our own 
use, as if we were absolute proprietors, and not stewards entrusted 
for others? Shall we make a difficulty to part with something to 
others, out of that abundance he hath bestowed upon any of us? 
Did not his goodness strip his Son of the glory of heaven for a time 
to enrich us? and shall we shrug when we are to part with a little 
to pleasure him? It is not very becoming for any to be backward 
in supplying the necessities of others with a few morsels, who have 
had the happiness to have had their greatest necessities supplied with 
his Son’s blood. He demands not that we should strip ourselves of 
all for others, but of a pittance, something of superfluity, which will 
turn more to our account than what is vainly and unprofitably con- 
sumed on our backs and bellies. If he hath given much to any of 
us, it is rather to lay aside part of the income for his service ; else 
we would monopolize Divine goodness to ourselves, and seem to dis- 
trust under our present experiments his future kindness, as though 
the last thing he gave us was attended with this language, Hoard up 
this, and expect no more from me; use it only to the glutting your 
avarice, and feeding your ambition: which would be against the 
whole scope of Divine goodness. If we do not endeavor to write 
after the comely copy he hath set us, we may provoke him to har- 
den himself against us, and in wrath bestow that on the fire, or on 
our enemies, which his goodness hath imparted to us for his glory, 
and the supplying the necessities of poor creatures. And, on the 
contrary, he is so delighted with this kind of imitation of him, that 
a cup of cold water, when there is no more to be done, shall not be 
unrewarded. 

(2.) Imitate God in his goodness, in a kindness to our worst ene- 
mies. The best man is more unworthy to receive anything from God 
than the worst can be to receive from us. Howkind is God to those 
that blaspheme him, and gives them the same sun, and the same 
showers, that he doth to the best men in the world! Is it not more 
our glory to imitate God in “doing good to those that hate us,” than 
to imitate. the men of the world in requiting evil, by a return of a 
sevenfold mischief? This would be a goodness which would van- 
quish the hearts of men, and render us greater than Alexanders and 
Ceosars, who did only triumph over miserable carcasses ; yea, it is to 
triumph over ourselves in being good against the sentiments of cor- 
rupt nature. Revenge makes us slaves to our passions, as much as 
the offenders, and good returns render us victorious over our adver! 
saries (Rom. xii. 21): ‘Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evl- 
with good.” When we took up our arms against God, his goodness 
contrived not our ruin, but our recovery. ‘This is such a goodness 
of God as could not be discovered in an innocent state; while man 


ON THE GOODNESS OF GOD. 355 


had continued in his duty, he could not have been guilty of an en- 
mity ; and God could not but affect him, unless he had denied him- 
self: so this of bemg good to our enemies could never have been 
practised in a state of rectitude; since, where was a perfect inno- 
cence, there could be no spark of enmity to one another. It can be 
no disparagement to any man’s dignity to cast his influences on his 
ereatest opposers, since God, who acts for his own glory, thinks not 
himself disparaged by sending forth the streams of his bounty on the 
wickedest persons, who are far meaner to him than those of the same 
blood can be to us. Who hath the worse thoughts of the sun, for 
shining upon the earth, that sends up vapors to cloud it? it can be 
no disgrace to resemble God; if his hand and bowels be open to us, 
let not ours be shut to any. 


DISCOURSE XIII. 
ON GOD’S DOMINION. 


sain ciii, 19—The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens: and his kingdom 
ruleth over all. 


THE Psalm begins with the praise of God, wherein the penman 
excites his soul to a right and elevated management of so great a 
duty (ver. 1): “Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within 
me, bless his holy name :” and because himself and all men were in- 
sufficient to offer up a praise to God answerable to the greatness of 
his benefits, he summons in the end of the psalm the angels, and all 
creatures, to join in concert with him. Observe, | 

1. As man is too shallow a creature to comprehend the excellency 
of God, so he is too dull and scanty a creature to offer up a due 
praise to God, both in regard of the excellency of his nature, and 
the multitude and greatness of his benefits. 

2. We are apt to forget Divine benefits: our souls must therefore 
be often jogged, and rousedup. ‘All that is within me,” every power 
of my rational, and every affection of my sensitive part: all his fac- 
ulties, all his thoughts. Our souls will hang back from God in every 
duty, much more in this, if we lay not a strict charge upon them. 
We are so void of a pure and entire love to God, that we have no 
mind to those duties. Wants will spur us on to prayer, but a pure 
love to God can only spirit us to praise. We are more ready to 
reach out a hand to receive his mercies, than to lift up our hearts to 
recognize them after the receipt. After the Psalmist had summoned 
his own soul to this task, he enumerates the Divine blessings received 
by him, to awaken his soul by a sense of them to so noble a work. 
He begins at the first and foundation mercy to himself, the pardon 
of his sin and justification of his person, the renewing of his sickly 
and languishing nature (ver. 8): ‘‘ Who forgives all thy iniquities, 
and heals all thy diseases.” His redemption from death, or eternal 
destruction ; his expected glorification thereupon, which he speaks 
of with that certainty, as if it were present (ver. 4): ‘‘ Who redeems 
thy life from destruction, who crowns thee with loving-kindness and 
tender mercies.” He makes his progress to the mercy manifested to 
the church in the protection of it against, or delivery of it from, op- 
pressions (ver. 6): “ The Lord executeth righteousness and judgment 
for all that are oppressed.” In the discovery of his will and law, 
and the glory of his merciful name to it (ver. 7, 8): “‘ He made known 
his ways unto Moses, and his acts unto the children of Israel. The 
Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy :” 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 357 


which latter words may refer also to the free and unmerited spring 
of the benefits he had reckoned up: wiz., the mercy of God, which 
he mentions also (ver. 10): ‘‘He hath not dealt with us after our 
sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities *” and then extols 
the perfection of Divine mercy, in the pardoning of sin (ver. 11, 12); 
the paternal tenderness of God (ver. 18); the eternity of his mercy 
(ver. 17); but restrains it to the proper object (ver. 11, 17), “to them 
that fear him;” 2. e. to them that believe in him. ear being the 
word commonly used for faith in the Old Testament, under the legal 
dispensation, wherein the spirit of bondage was more eminent than 
the spirit of adoption, and their fear more than their confidence. 
Observe, 

1. All true blessings grow up from the pardon of sin (ver. 3): 
“Who forgives all thine iniquities.” That is the first blessing, the 
top and crown of all other favors, which draws all other blessings 
after it, and sweetens all other blessings with it. The principal in- 
tent of Christ was expiation of sin, redemption from iniquity; the 
purchase of other blessings was consequent upon it. Pardon of sin 
is every blessing virtually, and in the root and spring it flows from 
the favor of God, and is such a gift as cannot be tainted with a curse, 
as outward things may. 

9. Where sin is pardoned, the soul is renewed (ver. 3): “ Who 
heals all thy diseases.” Where guilt is remitted, the deformity and 
sickness of the soul is cured. Forgiveness isa teeming mercy ; it 
never goes single; when we have an interest in Christ, as bearing 
the chastisement of our peace, we receive also a balsam from his 
blood, to heal the wounds we feel in our nature. (Isa. liti. 5): '“ The 
chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are 
healed.” As there is a guilt in sin, which binds us over to punish- 
ment, so there is a contagion in sin, which fills us with pestilent dis- 
eases; when the one is removed, the other is cured. Weshould not 
know how to love the one without the other. The renewing the soul 
is necessary for a delightful relish of the other blessings of God. A 
condemned malefactor, infected with a leprosy, or any other loathsome 
distemper, if pardoned, could take little comfort in his freedom from 
the gibbet without a cure of his plague. 

3. God is the sole and sovereign Author of all spiritual blessings : 
“ Who forgives all thy iniquities, and heals all thy diseases.” He 
refers all to God, nothing to himself in his own merit and strength. 
All, not the pardon of one sin merited by me, not the cure of one 

‘disease can I owe to my own power, and the strength of my free- 
will, and the operations of nature. He, and he alone is the Prince 
of pardon, the Physician that restores me, the Redeemer that delivers 
me; it is a sacrilege to divide the praise between God and ourselves. 
God only can knock off our fetters, expel our distempers, and restore 
a deformed soul to its decayed beauty. 

4, Gracious souls will bless God as much for sanctification as for 
justification. The initials of sanctification (and there are no more 
in this life) are worthy of solemn acknowledgment. Itis a sign of 
erowth in grace when our hymns are made up of acknowledgments 
of God’s sanctifying, as well as pardoning grace. In blessing God 


858 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


for the one, we rather show a love to ourselves; in blessing God for 
the other, we cast out a pure beam of love to God: because, by puri- 
fying grace, we are fitted to the service of our Maker, prepared to 
every good work which is delightful to him; by the other, we are 
eased in ourselves. Pardon fills us with inward peace, but sanctifi- 
cation fills us with an activity for God. Nothing isso capable of 
setting the soul in a heavenly tune, as the consideration of God as a 
pardoner and as a healer. 

5. Where sin is pardoned, the punishment is remitted (ver. 3, 4): 
“Who forgives all thy iniquities, and redeems thy life from destruc- 
tion.” A malefactor’s pardon puts an end to his chains, frees him 
from the stench of the dungeon, and fear of the gibbet. Pardon is 
nothing else but the remitting of guilt, and guilt is nothing else but 
an obligation to punishment as a penal debt for sin. A creditor's 
tearing a bond frees the debtor from payment and rigor. 

6. Growth in grace is always annexed to true sanctification. So 
that “thy youth is renewed like the eagle’s” (ver. 5). Interpreters 
trouble themselves much about the manner of the eagle’s renewing 
its youth, and regaining its vigor: he speaks best that saith, the 
Psalmist speaks only according to the opinion of the vulgar, and his 
design was not to write a natural history. Growth always accom- 
panies grace, as well as it doth nature in the body; not that it is 
without its qualms and languishing fits, as children are not, but still 
their distempers make them grow. Grace is not an idle, but an ac- 
tive principle. It is not like the Psalmist means it of the strength 
of the body, or the prosperity and stability of his government, but 
the vigor of his grace and comfort, since they are spiritual blessings 
here that are the matter of his song. The healing the disease con- 
duceth to the sprouting up and flourishing of the body. It is the 
nature of grace to go from strength to strength. 

7. When sin is pardoned, it is perfectly pardoned. “ As far as 
the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions 
from us” (ver. 11, 12). The east and west are the greatest distance 
in the world; the terms can never meet together. When sin is par- 
doned, it is never charged again; the guilt of it can no more return, 
than east can become west, or west become east. 

8. Obedience is necessary to an interest in the mercy of God. 
“The mercy of the Lord is to them that fear him, to them that re- 
member his commandments, to do them” (ver. 17). Commands are 
to be remembered in order to practice; a vain speculation is not the 
intent of the publication of them. : 

After the Psalmist had enumerated the benefits of God, he reflects 
upon the greatness of God, and considers him on his throne encom- 
passed with the angels, the ministers of his providence. “The Lord 
hath prepared his throne in the heavens and his kingdom rules over 
all” (ver. 19). He brings in this of his dominion just after he had 
largely treated of his mercy. Hither, 

1. To signify, That God is not only to be praised for his mercy, 
but for his majesty, both for the height and extent of his authority. 

2. To extol the greatness of his mercy and pity. What I have 

q Amyrald. in oe. 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 359 


said now, O my soul, of the mercy of God, and his paternal pity, is 
commended by his majesty; his grandeur hinders not his clemency : 
though his throne be high, his bowels are tender. He looks down 
upon his meanest servants from the height of his glory. Since his 
majesty is infinite, his mercy must be as great as his majesty. It 
must be a greater pity lodging in his breast, than what is in any 
creature, since it is not damped by the greatness of his sovereignty. 

3 To render his mercy more comfortable. ‘The mercy I have 
spoken of, O my soul, is not the mercy of a subject, but of a sover- 
eign. An executioner may torture a criminal, and strip him of his 
life, and a vulgar pity cannot relieve him, but the clemency of the 
prince can perfectly pardon him. It is that God who hath none 
above him to control him, none below him to resist him, that hath 
performed all the acts of grace to thee. If God by his supreme au- 
thority pardons us, who can reverse it? If all the subjects of God 
in the world should pardon us, and God withhold his grant, what 
will it profit us? Take comfort, O my soul, since God from his 
throne in the highest, and that God who rules over every particular 
of the creation, hath granted and sealed thy pardon to thee. What 
would his grace signify, if he were not a monarch, extending his 
royal empire over everything, and swaying all by his sceptre ? 

4 To render the Psalmist’s confidence more firm in any pressures. 
Ver. 15, 16. He had considered the misery of man in the shortness 
of his life; his place should know him no more; he should never 
return to his authority, employments, opportunities, that death would 
take from him: but, howsoever, the mercy and majesty of God were 
the ground of his confidence. He draws himself from poring upon. 
any calamities which may assault him, to heaven, the place where 
God orders all things that are done on the earth. He is able to pro- 
tect us from our dangers, and to deliver us from our distresses ; 
whatsoever miseries thou mayest lie under, O my soul, cast thy eye 
up to heaven, and see a pitying God in a majestic authority: a God 
who can perform what he hath promised to them that fear him, since 
he hath a throne above the heavens, and bears sway over all that 
envy thy happiness, and would stain thy felicity: a God whose au- 
thority cannot be curtailed and dismembered by any. When the 
aes solicits the sounding of the Divine bowels, he urgeth him 

y his dwelling in heaven, the habitation of his holiness (Isa. lxiu. 
15). His kingdom ruleth over all: there is none therefore hath any 
authority to make him break his covenant, or violate his promise. 

5. As an incentive to obedience. The Lord is merciful, saith he, 
to them “that remember his commandments to do them” (ver. 17, 
18): and then brings in the text as an encouragement to observe his 
precepts. He hath a majesty that deserves it from us, and an au- 
thority to protect usin it. If a king in a small spot of earth 1s to 
be obeyed by his subjects, how much more is God, who 1s more ma- 
jestic than all the angels in heaven, and monarchs on earth; who 
hath a majesty to exact our obedience, and a mercy to allure it! 
We should not set upon the performance of any duty, without an 
eye lifted up to God asa great king. It would make us willing to 
serve him; the more noble the person, the more honorable and 


$60 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


powerful the prince, the more glorious is his service. A view of 
God upon his throne will make us think his service our privilege, 
his precepts our ornaments, and obedience to him the greatest honor 
and nobility. It will make us weighty and serious in our perform- 
ances: it would stake us down to any duty. The reason we are so 
loose and unmannerly in the carriage of our souls before God, is be- 
cause we consider him not as a “ great King” (Mal. i. 14). “ Our 
Father, which art in heaven,” in regard of his majesty, is the preface 
to prayer. 

Let us now consider the words in themselves. “The Lord hath 
prepared his throne in the heavens, and hiskingdom rules over all.” 

Lhe Lord hath prepared—The word signifies ‘“ established,” as 
well as ‘‘ prepared,” and might so be rendered. Due preparation is 
a natural way to the establishment of a thing: hasty resolves break 
and moulder. This notes, 1. The infiniteness of his authority. He 
prepares it, none else for him. It is a dominion that originally re- 
sides in his nature, not derived from any by birth or commission ; 
he alone prepared it. He is the sole cause of his own kingdom; his 
authority therefore is unbounded, as infinité as his nature: none can’ 
set laws to him, because none but himself prepared his throne for 
him. As he will not impair his own happiness, so he will not abridge 
himself of his own authority. 2. Readiness to exercise it upon due 
occasions. He hath prepared his throne: he is not at a loss; he 
necds not stay for a commission or instructions from any how to act. 
He hath all things ready for the assistance of his people; he hath 
rewards and punishments; his treasures and axes, the great marks 
of authority lying by him, the one for the good, the other for the 
wicked. His “mercy he keeps by him for thousands” (Exod. xxxiv. 
7). His “ arrows” he hath prepared by him for rebels (Ps. vii. 18). 
3. Wise management of it. It is prepared; preparations imply pru- 
dence; the government of God is not a rash and heady authority. 
A prince upon his throne, a judge upon the bench, manages things 
with the greatest discretion, or should be supposed so to do. 4. 
Successfulness and duration of it. He hath prepared or established. 
It is fixed, not tottering; it is an immovable dominion; all the 
strugglings of men and devils cannot overturn it, nor so much as 
shake it. It is established above the reach of obstinate rebels; he 
cannot be deposed from it, he cannot be mated in it. His dominion, 
as himself, abides forever. And as his counsel, so his authority, 
shall stand, and “‘he will do all his pleasure” (Isa. xlvi. 10). 

Eis throne in the heavens ——This is an expression to signify the 
authority of God; for as God hath no member properly, though he 
be so represented to us, so he hath properly no throne. It signifies 
his power of reigning and judging. A throne is proper to royalty, 
the seat of majesty in its excellency, and the place where the deepest 
respect and homage of subjects is paid, and their petitions presented. 
That the throne of God is in the heavens, that there he sits as Sove- 
reign, is the opinion of all that acknowledge a God; when they 
stand in need of his authority to assist them, their eyes are lifted up, 
and their heads stretched out to heaven; so his Son Christ prayed ; 
he ‘lifted up his eyes to heaven,” as the place where his Father sat 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 861 


in majesty, as the most adorable object (John xvii. 1). Heaven hath 
the title of his “throne,” as the earth hath that of his “ foot- 
stool” (Isa. lxvi. 1.) And, therefore, heaven is sometimes put for 
the authority of God (Dan. iv: 26). ‘“ After that thou shalt have 
known that the heavens do rule,” 2. e. that God, who hath his throne 
in the heavens, orders earthly princes and sceptres as he pleases, and 
rules over the kingdoms of the world. His throne in the heavens 
notes, 1. The glory of his dominion. The heavens are the most 
stately and comely pieces of the creation. His majesty is there most 
visible, his glory most splendid (Ps. xix. 1). The heavens speak out 
with a full mouth his glory. It is therefore called ‘the habitation” 
of his ‘“‘holiness and of his glory” (Isa. lxiii. 15). There is the 
greater glister and brightness of his glory. The whole earth, indeed, 
is full of his glory, full of the beams of it; the heaven is full of the 
body of it; as the rays of the sun reach the earth, but the full glory 
of it is in the firmament. In heaven his dominion is more acknowl- 
edged by the angels standing at his beck, and by their readiness and 
swittness obeying his commands, going and returning as a flash of 
lightning (Hzek. 1. 14). His throne may well be said to be in the 
heavens, since his dominion is not disputed there by the angels that 
attend him, as it is on earth by the rebels that arm themselves 
against him. 2. The supremacy of his empire. The heavens are 
the loftiest part of the creation, and the only fit palace for him; it is 
in the heavens his majesty and dignity are so sublime, that they are 
elevated above all earthly empires. 8. Peculiarity of this dominion. 
He rules in the heavens alone. There is some shadow Of empire in 
the world. Royalty is communicated to men as his substitutes. He 
hath disposed a vicarious dominion to men in his footstool, the earth; 
he gives them some share in his authority; and, therefore, the title 
of his name (Ps. lxxxii. 6): “I have said, ye are gods;” but in 
heaven he reigns alone without any substitutes; his throne is there. 
He gives out his orders to the angels himself; the marks of his 
immediate sovereignty are there most visible. He hath no vicars- 
general of that empire. His authority is not delegated to any crea- 
ture; he rules the blessed spirits by himself; but he rules men that 
are on his footstool by others of the same kind, men of their own 
nature. 4, The vastness of his empire. The earth is but a spot to 
the heavens; what is England in a map to the whole earth, but a 
spot you may cover with your finger? much less must the whole 
earth be to the extended heavens; it is but a little point or atom to 
what is visible; the sun is vastly bigger than it, and several stars 
are supposed to be of a greater bulk than the earth; and how many, 
and what heavens are beyond, the ignorance of man cannot under- 
stand. If the “throne” of God be there, it is a larger circuit he 
rules in than can well be conceived. You cannot conceive the 
many millions of little particles there are in the earth; and if all 
put together be but as one point to that place where the throne of 
God is seated, how vast must his empire be! He rules there over 
the angels, which ‘excel in strength” those “hosts” of his “which 
do his pleasure,” in comparison of whom all the men in the world, 
and the power of the greatest potentates, is no more than the strength 


362 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of an ant or fly; multitudes of them encircle his throne, and listen 
to his orders without roving, and execute them without disputing. 
And since his throne is in the heavens, it will follow, that all things 
under the heaven are parts of his dominion; his throne being in 
the highest place, the inferior things of earth cannot but be subject 
to him; and it necessarily includes his influence on all things below: 
because the heavens are the cause of all the motion in the world, 
the immediate thing the earth doth naturally address to for corn, 
wine, and oil, above which there is no superior but the Lord (Hos. 
ii. 21, 22): “The earth hears the corn, wine, and oil; the heavens 
hear the earth, and the Lord hears the heavens.” 5. The easi- 
ness of managing this government. His throne being placed on 
high, he cannot but behold all things that are done below; the 
height of a place gives advantage to a pure and clear eye to be- 
hold things below it. Had the sun an eye, nothing could be done 
in the open air out of its ken. The “throne” of God being in 
heaven, he easily looks from thence upon all the children of men 
(Ps. xiv. 2): “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the chil- 
dren of men, to see if there were any that did understand.” He looks 
not down from heaven as if he were in regard of his presence con- 
fined there: but he looks down majestically, and by way of authori- 
ty, not as the look of a bare spectator, but the look of a governor, 
to pass a sentence upon them as a judge. His being in the heavens 
renders him capable of doing “ whatsoever he pleases” (Ps. cxv. 38). 
His “throne” being there, he can by a word, in stopping the mo- 
tions of the‘heavens, turn the whole earth into confusion. In this 
respect, it is said, “He rides upon the heaven in thy help” (Deut. 
xxxiii. 26); discharges his thunders upon men, and makes the in- 
fluences of it serve his people’s interest. By one turn of a cock, as 
you see in grottoes, he can cause streams from several parts of the 
heavens to refresh, or ruin the world. 6. Duration of it. The 
heavens are incorruptible; his throne is placed there in an incor- 
ruptible state. Earthly empires have their decays and dissolutions. 
The throne of God outlives the dissolution of the world. 

His kingdom rules over all—He hath an absolute right over all 
things within the circuit of heaven and earth; though his throne be 
in heaven, as the place where his glory is most eminent and visible, 
his authority most exactly obeyed, yet his kingdom extends itself 
to the lower parts of the earth. He doth not muffle and cloud up 
himself in heaven, or confine his sovereignty to that place, his royal 
power extends to all visible, as well as invisible things: he is pro- 
prietor and possessor of all (Deut. x. 14): ‘(The heaven and the 
heaven of heavens is the Lord’s thy God, the earth also, with all 
that is there.” He hath right to dispose of all as he pleases. He 
doth not say, his kingdom rules all that fear him, but, “over all ;” 
so that it is not the kingdom of grace he here speaks of, but his 
natural and universal kingdom. Over angels and men; Jews and 
Gentiles; animate and inanimate things. 

The Psalmist considers God here as a great monarch and general, 
and all creatures as his hosts and regiments under him, and takes 
notice principally of two things. 1. The establishment of his throne 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 863 


together with the seat of it. He hath prepared his throne in the heav- 
ens. 2. The extent of his empire— His kingdom rules overall. This 
text, in all the parts of it, is a fit basis for a discourse upon the do- 
minion of God, and the observation will be this. 

Doctrine.—God is sovereign Lord and King, and exerciseth a do- 
minion over the whole world, both heaven and earth. This is so 
clear, that nothing is more spoken of in Scripture. The very name, 
“Lord,” imports it; a name originally belonging to gods, and from 
them translated to others. And he is frequently called “the Lord 
of Hosts,” because all the troops and armies of spiritual and corporeal 
creatures are in his hands, and at his service: this is one of his prin- 
cipal titles. And the angels are called his “hosts” (ver. 21, follow- 
ing the text) his camp and militia: but more plainly (1 Kings, 
xxil. 19), God is presented upon his throne, encompassed with all 
the “hosts of heaven” standing on his right hand and on his left, 
which can be understood of no other than the angels, that wait for 
the commands of their Sovereign, and stand about, not to counsel 
him, but to receive his orders. ‘The sun, moon, and stars, are called 
his “ hosts” (Deut. iv. 19); appointed by him for the government of 
inferior things: he hath an absolute authority over the greatest and 
the least creatures; over those that are most dreadful, and those that 
are most beneficial; over the good angels that willingly obey him, 
over the evil angels that seem most incapable of government. And 
as he is thus ‘‘ Lord of hosts,” he is the “ King of glory,” ora glorious 
King (Ps. xxiv. 10). You find him called a “great King,” the 
“Most High” (Ps. xcii. 1), the Supreme Monarch, there being no 
dignity in heaven or earth but what is dim before him, and infinitely 
inferior to him; yea, he hath the title of “Only King” (1 Tim. vi. 15). 
The title of royalty truly and properly only belongs to him: you 
may see it described very magnificently by David, at the free-will 
offering for the building of the temple (1Chron. xxix. 11, 12): “ Thine, 
O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the vic- 
tory, and the majesty; thine is the kingdom, O God, and thou art 
exalted as Head above all: both riches and honor come of thee, and 
thou reignest over all; and in thy hand is power and might; and in 
thy hand it is to make great, and to give strength to all.” He hath 
an eminency of power or authority above all: all earthly princes 
received their diadems from him, yea, even those that will not ac- 
knowledge him, and he hath a more absolute power over them than 
they can challenge over their meanest vassals: as God hath a knowl- 
edge infinitely above our knowledge, so he hath a dominion incom- 
prehensibly above any dominion of man; and, by all the shadows 
drawn from the authority of one man over another, we can have but 
weak glimmerings of the authority and dominion of God. 

There is a threefold dominion of God. 1, N atural, which is abso- 
lute over all creatures, and is founded in the nature of God as Crea- 
tor. 2. Spiritual, or gracious, which is a dominion over his church 
as redeemed, and founded in the covenant of grace. 3. A glorious 
kingdom, at the winding up of all, wherein he shall reign over all, 
either in the glory of his mercy, as over the glorified saints, or in the 
glory of his justice, in the condemned devils and men. The first 


364 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


dominion is founded in nature; the second in grace; the third in re- 
gard of the blessed in grace; in regard of the damned, in demerit in 
them, and justice in him. He is Lord of all things, and always in 
regard of propriety (Ps. xxiv. 1): “The earth is the Lord's, and the 
fulness thereof; the world, and all that dwell therein.” The earth, 
with the riches and treasures in the bowels of it; the habitable world, 
with everything that moves upon it, are his; he hath the sole right, 
and what right soever any others have is derived from him. In re- 
gard also of possession (Gen. xiv. 22): ‘The Most High God, pos- 
sessor of heaven and earth:” in respect of whom, man is not the 
Pra ee nor possessor, but usufructuary at the will of this grand 
ord. 

In the prosecution of this, I. I shall lay down some general prop- 
ositions for the clearing and confirming it. I. I shall show wherein 
this right of dominion is founded. III. What the nature of it is. 
IV. Wherein it consists; and how it is manifested. 

I. Some general propositions for the clearing and confirming of it. 

1. We must know the difference between the might or power of 
God and his authority. We commonly mean by the power of God 
the strength of God, whereby he is able to effect all his purposes; 
by the authority of God, we mean the right he hath to act what he 
pleases: omnipotence is his physical power, whereby he is able to 
do what he will; dominion is his moral power, whereby it is lawful 
for him to do what he will. Among men, strength and authority 
are two distinct things; a subject may be a giant, and be stronger 
than his prince, but he hath not the same authority as his prince: 
worldly dominion may be seated, not in a brawny arm, but a sickly 
and infirm body. As knowledge and wisdom are distinguished ; 
knowledge respects the matter, being, and nature of a thing ; wisdom 
respects the harmony, order, and actual usefulness of a thing; knowl- 
edge searcheth the nature of a thing, and wisdom employs that thing 
to its proper use: a man may have much knowledge, and little wis- 
dom; so a man may have much strength, and little or no authority ; 
a, greater strength may be settled in the servant, but a greater au 
thority resides in the master; strength is the natural vigor of a man: 
God hath an infinite strength, he hath a strength to bring to pass 
whatsover he decrees; he acts without fainting and weakness (Isa. 
xl. 28), and impairs not his strength by the exercise of it: as God is 
Lord, he hath a right to enact; as he is almighty, he hath a power 
to execute; his strength is the executive power belonging to his 
dominion: in regard of his sovereignty, he hath a right to command 
all creatures; in regard of his almightiness, he hath power to make 
his commands be obeyed, or to punish men for the violation of them: 
his power is that whereby he subdues all creatures under him; his 
dominion is that whereby he hath a right to subdue all creatures 
under him. This dominion is a right of making what he pleases, 
of possessing what he made, of disposing of what he doth possess ; 
whereas his power is an ability to make what he hath a right to 
create, to hold what he doth possess, and to execute the manner 
wherein he resolves to dispose of his creatures. 

9. All the other attributes of God refer to this perfection of domi- 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 3865 


nion. They all bespeak him fit for it, and are discovered in the 
exercise of 1 (which hath been manifested in the discourses of those 
attributes we have passed through hitherto). His goodness fits him 
for it, because he can never use his authority but for the good of the 
creatures, and conducting them to their true end: his wisdom can 
never be mistaken in the exercise of it; his power can accomplish 
the decrees that flow from his absolute authority. What can be 
more rightful than the placing authority in such an infinite Good- 
ness, that hath bowels to pity, as well as a sceptre to sway his sub- 
jects? that hath a mind to contrive, and a will to regulate his con- 
trivances for his own glory and his creatures’ good, and an arm of 
power to bring to pass what he orders? Without this dominion, 
some perfections, as justice and mercy, would lie in obscurity, and 
much of his wisdom would be shrouded from our sight and know} 
edge. 

3. This of dominion, as well as that of power, hath been acknowl 
edged by all. The high priest was to ‘‘ waive the offering,” or shake 
it to and fro (Exod. xxix. 24), which the Jews say was customarily 
from east to west, and from north to south, the four quarters of the 
world, to signify God’s sovereignty over all the parts of the world; 
~ and some of the heathens, in their adorations, turned their bodies to 
all quarters, to signify the extensive dominion of God throughout 
the whole earth. That dominion did of right pertain to the Deity, 
was confessed by the heathen in the name “ Baal,” given to their 
idols, which signifies Lord; and was not a name of one idol, adored 
for a god, but common to all the eastern idols. God hath inter- 
woven the notion of his sovereignty in the nature and constitution 
of man, in the noblest and most inward acts of his soul, in that fac- 
ulty or act which is most necessary for him, in his converse in this 
world, either with God or man: it is stamped upon the consicence 
of man, and flashes in his face in every act of self-judgment conscience 
passes upon a man: every reflection of conscience implies an obliga- 
tion of man to some law ‘written in his heart” (Rom. 11. 15). This 
law cannot be without a legislator, nor this legislator without a sove- 
reion dominion; these are but natural and easy consequences in the 
mind of man from every act of conscience. The indelible authority 
of conscience in man, 1n the whole exercise of it, bears a respect to 
the sovereignty of God, clearly proclaims not only a supreme Being, 
but a supreme Governor, and points man directly to 1, that a man 
may as soon deny his having such a reflecting principle within him, 
as deny God’s dominion over him, and consequently over the whole 
world of rational creatures. 

4, This notion of sovereignty is inseparable from the notion of a 
God. To acknowledge the existence of a God, and to acknowledge 
him a rewarder, are linked together (Heb. xi. 6). To acknowledge 
him a rewarder, is to acknowledge him a governor; rewards being 
the marks of dominion. The very name of God includes in it a 
supremacy and an actual rule. He cannot be conceived as God, but 
he must be conceived as the highest authority in the world. It is as 
possible for him not to be God as not to be supreme. Wherein can 
the exercise of his excellencies be apparent, but in his soverign rule? 


366 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


To fancy an infinite power without a supreme dominion, is to fancy 
a mighty senseless statue, fit to be beheld, but not fit to be obeyed; 
as not being able or having no right to give out orders, or not caring 
for the exercise of it. God cannot be supposed to be the chief being, 
but he must be supposed to give laws to all, and receive laws from 
none. Andif we suppose him with a perfection of justice and right- 
eousness (which we must do, unless we would make a lame and im- 
perfect God) we must suppose him to have an entire dominion, with- 
out which he could never be able to manifest his justice. And 
without a supreme dominion he could not manifest the supremacy 
and infiniteness of his righteousness. 

(1.) We cannot suppose God a Creator, without supposing a 
sovereign dominion in him. No creature can be made without some 
law in its nature; if it had not law, it would be created to no pur- 
pose, to no regular end. It would be utterly unbecoming an infinite 
wisdom to create a lawless creature, a creature wholly vain; much 
less can a rational creature be made without a law: if it had no law, 
it were not rational: for the very notion of a rational creature 
implies reason to be a law to it, and implies an acting by rule. If 
you could suppose rational creatures without a law, you might sup- 

pose that they might blaspheme their Creator, and murder their 

fellow-creatures, and commit the most abominable villanies destruc- 
tive to human society, without sin; for ‘‘ where there is no law, there 
is no transgression.” But those things are accounted sins by all 
mankind, aud sins against the Supreme Being: so that a dominion, 
and the exercise of it, is so fast linked to God, so entirely in him, so 
intrinsic in his nature, that it cannot be imagined that a rational 
creature can be made by him, without a stamp and mark of that 
dominion in his very nature and frame; it is so inseparable 
from God in his very act of creation. 

(2.) It is such a dominion as cannot be renounced by God himself. 
It is so intrinsic and connatural to him, so inlaid in the nature 
of God, that he cannot strip himself of it, nor of the exercise of it, 
while any creature remains. It is preserved by him, for it could not 
subsist of itself; it is governed by him, it could not else answer its 
end. It is impossible there can be a creature, which hath not God 
for its Lord. Christ himself, though in regard of his Deity equal 
with God, yet in regard of his created state, and assuming our nature, 
was God’s servant, was governed by him in the whole of his office, 
acted according to his command and directions; God calls him his 
servant (Isa. xlii. 1): and Christ, in that prophetic psalm of him, 
calls God his Lord (Ps. xvi. 2): ‘‘O my soul, thou hast said unto the 
Lord, Thou art my Lord.” . It was impossible it should be otherwise ; 
justice had been so far from being satisfied, that it had been highly 
incensed if the order of things in the due subjection to God had been 
broke, and his terms had not been complied with. It would bea 
judgment upon the world if God should give up the government to 
any else, as it is when he gives “children to be princes” (Isa. ii. 4) ; 
t. e. children in understanding. 

(8.) It is so inseparable, that it cannot be communicated to any 

r Maccov. Colleg. Theolog. 10 Disput. 18, pp. 6, 7, or thereabout. 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 367 


creature. No creature is able to exercise it; every creature is unable 
to perform all the offices that belong to this dominion. No creature 
can impose laws upon the consciences of men: man knows not the 
inlets into the soul, his pen cannot reach the inwards of man. What 
laws he hath power to propose to conscience, he cannot see executed ; 
because every creature wants omniscience ; he is not able to perceive 
all those breaches of the law which may be committed at the same 
time in so many cities, so many chambers. Or, suppose an angel, in 
regard to the height of his standing, and the insufficiency of walls, 
and darkness, and distance to obstruct his view, can behold men’s 
actions, yet he cannot know the internal acts of men’s minds and 
wills, without some outward eruption and appearance of them. And 
if he be ignorant of them, how can he execute his laws? If he only 
understand the outward fact without the inward thought, how can 
he dispense a justice proportionable to the crime ? he must needs be 
ignorant of that which adds the greatest aggravation sometimes to a 
sin, and inflicts a lighter punishment upon that which receives 
a deeper tincture from the inward posture of the mind, than another 
fact may do, which in the outward act may appear more base and 
unjust; and so while he intends righteousness, may act a degree of 
injustice. Besides, no creature can inflict a due punishment for sin ; 
that which is due to sin, isa loss of the vision and sight of God ; but 
none can deprive any of that but God himself; nor can a creature 
reward another with eternal life, which consists in communion with 
God, which none but God can bestow.’ 

Il. Wherein the dominion of God is founded. 

1. On the excellency of his nature. Indeed, a bare excellency of 
nature bespeaks a fitness for government, but doth not properly con- 
vey aright of government. Excellency speaks aptitude, not title: 
a subject may have more wisdom than the prince, and be fitter to 
hold the reins of government, but he hath not a title to royalty. A 
man of large capacity and strong virtue is fit to serve his country in 
parliament, but the election of the people conveys a title to him. 
Yet a strain of intellectual and moral abilities beyond others, 1s 
a, foundation for dominion. And it is commonly seen that such 
eminences in men, though they do not invest them with a civil author- 
ity, or an authority of jurisdiction, yet they create a veneration in 
the minds of men; their virtue attracts reverence, and their advice 
is regarded as an oracle. Old men by their age, when stored with 
more wisdom and knowledge by reason of their long experience, 
acquire a kind of power over the younger in their dictates and 
councils, so that they gain, by the strength of that excellency, a real 
authority in the minds of those men they converse with, and possess 
themselves of a deep respect for them. God therefore being an in- 
comprehensible ocean of all perfection, and possessing infinitely all 
those virtues that may lay a claim to dominion, hath the first foun- 
dation of it in his own nature. His incomparable and unparalleled 
excellency, as well as the greatness of his work, attracts the volun- 
tary worship of him as a sovereign Lord (Ps. Ixxxvi. 8): “ Among 
the gods, there is none like unto thee; neither are there any works 

* Maceoy. Colleg. Theolog. Disput. 18, pp. 12, 13. 


368 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


like unto thy work. All nations shall come and worship before 
thee.” Though his benefits are great engagements to our obedience 
and affection, yet his infinite majesty and perfection requires the 
first place in our acknowledgements and adorations. Upon this ac- 
count God claims it (Isa. xlvi. 9): ‘I am God, and there is none 
like me; I will do all my pleasure :” and the prophet Jeremiah upon 
the same account acknowledgeth it (Jer. x. 6, 7): “ Forasmuch as 
there is none like unto thee, O Lord, thou art great, and thy name 
is great in might: who would not fear thee, O King of nations? for 
to thee doth it appertain: forasmuch as there is none like unto 
thee.” And this is a more noble title of dominion, it being an un- 
created title, and more eminent than that of creation or preservation. 
This is the natural order God hath placed in his creatures, that the 
more excellent should rule the inferior.t He committed not the 
government of lower creatures to lions and tigers, that have a delight 
in blood, but no knowledge of virtue ; but to man, who had an emi- 
nence in his nature above other creatures, and was formed with a 
perfect rectitude, and a height of reason to guide the reins over them. 
In man, the soul being of a more sublime nature, is set of right to 
_ rule over the body ; the mind, the most excellent faculty of the soul, 
to rule over the other powers of it: and wisdom, the most excellent 
habit of the mind, to guide and regulate that in its determinations ; 
and when the body and sensitive appetite control the soul and mind, 
it is an usurpation against nature, not a rule according to nature. 
The excellency, thereof, of the Divine nature is the natural founda- 
tion for his dominion. He hath wisdom to know what is fit for him 
to do, and an immutable righteousness whereby he cannot do any 
thing base and unworthy: he hath a foreknowledge whereby he is 
able to order all things to answer his own glorious designs and the 
end of his government, that nothing can go awry, nothing put him 
to a stand, and constrain him to meditate new counsels. So that 
if it could be supposed that the world had not been created by him, 
that the parts of it had met together by chance, and been compacted 
into such a body, none but God, the supreme and most excellent 
Being in the world, could have merited, and deservedly challenged 
the government of it; because nothing had an excellency of nature 
to capacitate it for it, as he hath, or to enter into a contest with him 
for a sufficiency to govern." 

2. It is founded in his act of creation. He is the sovereign Lord, 
as he is the almighty Creator. The relation of an entire Creator in- 
duceth the relation of an absolute Lord; he that gives being, 
motion, that is the sole cause of the being of a thing, which was be- 
fore nothing, that hath nothing to concur with him, nothing to as- 
sist him, but by his sole power commands it to stand up into being, 
is the unquestionable Lord and proprietor of that thing that hath no 
dependence but upon him; and by this act of creation, which 
extended to all things, he became universal Sovereign over all things: 
and those that waive the excellency of his nature as the foundation 
of his government, easily acknowledge the sufficiency of it upon his 
actual creation. His dominion of jurisdiction results from creation. 

t Raynaud, Theolog. Nat. p. 757. “ Camero. p. 371. Amyrald, Dissert. pp. 72, 78. 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 369 


When God himself makes an oration in defence of his sovereignty 
(Job xxxvii.), his chief arguments are drawn from creation; and 
(Ps. xcv. 8, 5), “The Lord is a great King above all gods; the sea 
is his, and he made it:” and so the apostle, in his sermon to the 
Athenians. As he “ made the world, and all things therein,” he is 
styled, ‘‘ Lord of heaven and earth” (Acts xvii. 24). His dominion, 
also, of property stands upon this basis: “The heavens are thine, 
the earth also is thine: as for the world, and the fulness thereof, 
thou hast founded them” (Ps. lxxxix. 11). Upon this title of form- 
ing Israel as a creature, or rather as a church, he demands their ser- 
vice to him as their Sovereign: ‘“O Jacob and Israel, thou art my 
servant, I have formed thee: thou art my servant, O Israel” (Isa. 
xliv. 21). The sovereignty of God naturally ariseth from the rela- 
tion of all things to himself as their entire Creator, and their natural 
and inseparable dependence upon him in regard of their being and 
well-being. It depends not upon the election of men; God hath a 
natural dominion over us as creatures, before he hath a dominion by 
consent over us as converts: as soon as ever anything began to be a 
creature, it was a vassal to God, asa Lord. Hvery man is acknow- 
ledged to have a right of possessing what he hath made, and a power 
of dominion over what he hath framed: he may either cherish his 
own work, or dash it in pieces; he may either add a greater come- 
liness to it, or deface what he hath already imparted. He hath a 
right of property in it: no other man can, without injury, pilfer his 
own work from him. The work hath no propriety in itself; the 
right must lie in the immediate framer, or in the person that em- 
ployed him. The first cause of everything hath an unquestionable 
dominion of propriety in it upon the score of justice. By the law 
of nations, the first finder of a country is esteemed the rightful pos- 
sessor and lord of that country, and the first inventor of an art hath 
a right of exercising it. If aman hath a just claim of dominion over 
that thing whose materials were not of his framing, but from only 
the addition of a new figure from his skill; as a limner over his pic- 
ture, the cloth whereof he never made, nor the colors wherewith he 
draws it were never endued by him with their distinct qualities, but 
only he applies them by his art, to compose such a figure; much 
more hath God a rightful claim of dominion over his creatures, 
whose entire being, both in matter and form, and every particle of 
their excellency, was breathed out by the word of his mouth. He 
did not only give the matter a form, but bestowed upon the matter 
itself a being; it was formed by none to his hand, as the matter is 
on which an artist works. He had the being of all things in his own 
power, and it was at his choice whether he would impart it or no; 
there can be no juster and stronger ground of a claim than this. A 
man hath aright to a piece of brass or gold by his purchase, but 
when by his engraving he hath formed it into am excellent statue, 
there results an increase of his right upon the account of his artifice. 
God’s creatior of the matter of man gave him a right over man ; but 
his creation of him in go eminent an excellency, with reason to guide 
him, a clear eye of understanding to discern light from darkness, and 
truth from falsehood, a freedom of will to act accordingly, and 
VOL. I.—2 


370 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


an original righteousness as the varnish and beauty of all; here is 
the strongest foundation for a claim of authority over man, and the 
strongest obligation on man for subjection to God. If all those 
things had been past over to God by another hand, he could not be 
the supreme Lord, nor could have an absolute right to dispose of 
them at his pleasure: that would have been the invasion of another's 
right. Besides, creation is the only first discovery of his dominion. 
Before the world was framed there was nothing but God himself, 
and, properly, nothing is said to have dominion over itself; this is a 
relative attribute, reflecting on the works of God,x He had a right 
of dominion in his nature from eternity, but before creation he was 
actually Lord only of a nullity; where there is nothing it can have 
no relation; nothing is not the subject of possession nor of dominion. 
There could be no exercise of this dominion without creation: what 
exercise can a sovereign have without subjects? Sovereignty speaks 
a relation to subjects, and none is properly a sovereign without sub- 
jects. To conclude: from hence doth result God’s universal do- 
minion; for being Maker of all, he is the ruler of all, and his per- 
petual dominion; for as long as God continues in the relation of 
~ Creator, the right of his sovereignty as Creator cannot be abolished. 

3. As God is the final cause, or end of all, he is Lord of all. 
The end hath a greater sovereignty in actions than the actor itself: 
the actor hath a sovereignty over others in action, but the end for 
which any one works hath a sovereignty over the agent himself: a 
limner hath a sovereignty over the picture he is framing, or hath 
framed, but the end for which he framed it, either his profit he de- 
signed from it, or the honor and credit of skill he aimed at in it, 
hath a dominion over the limner himself: the end moves and ex- 
cites the artist to work; it spirits him in it, conducts him in his 
whole business, possesses his mind, and sits triumphant in him in all 
the progress of his work; it is the first cause for which the whole 
work is wrought.y Now God, in his actual creation of all, is the 
sovereign end of all; ‘for thy pleasure they are and were created” 
(Rev. iv. 11); ‘The Lord hath made all things for himself” (Prov. 
xvi. 4). Man, indeed, is the subordinate and immediate end of the 
lower creation, and therefore had the dominion over other creatures 
granted to him: but God being the ultimate and principal end, hath 
the sovereign and principal dominion; all things as much refer to 
him, as the last end, as they flow from him as the first cause. So 
that, as I said before, if the world had been compacted together by 
a jumbling chance, without a wise hand, as some have foolishly im- 
agined, none could have been an antagonist with God for the gov- 
ernment of the world; but God, in regard of the excellency of his 
nature, would have been the Rector of it, unless those atoms that 
had composed the world had had an ability to govern it. Since 
there could be no aniversal end of all things but God, God only can 
claim an entire right to the government of it; for though man be 
the end of the lower creation, yet man is not the end of himself and 
his own being; he is not the end of the creation of the supreme 


x Stoughton’s “ Righteous Man’s Plea,” Serm. VI. p. 28 
y Vid. Lessium de Perfect. Divin. pp. 77, 78. 


ON GOD’S DOMINION, Sti 


heavens; he is not able to govern them; they are out of his ken, 
and out of his reach. None fit in regard of the excellency of na- 
ture, to be the chief end of the whole world but God; and therefore 
none can have a right to the dominion of it but God: in this regard 
God’s dominion differs from the dominion of all earthly potentates. 
All the subjects in creation were made for God as their end, so are 
not people for rulers, but rulers made for people for their protec- 
tion, and the preservation of order in societies. 

4, ‘he dominion of God is founded upon his preservation of 
things. (Ps. xev. 8, 4); “ The Lord is a great King above all gods :” 
why? ‘In his hand are all the deep places of the earth.” While 
his hand holds things, his hand hath a dominion over them. He 
that holds a stone in the air, exerciseth a dominion over its natural 
inclination in hindering it from falling. The creature depends 
wholly upon God in its preservation; as soon as that Divine hand 
which sustains everything were withdrawn, a languishment and 
Swooning would be the next turn in the creature. He is called 
Lord, Adonai, in regard of his sustentation of all things by his con- 
tinual influx; the word coming of mx, which signifies a basis or 
pillar, that supports a building. God is the Lord of all, as he is the 
sustainer of all by his power, as well as the Creator of all by his 
word. The sun hath a sovereign dominion over its own beams, 
which depend upon it, so that if he withdraws himself, they all at- 
tend him, and the world is left in darkness. God maintains the 
vigor of all things, conducts them in their operations; so that no- 
thing that they are, nothing that they have, but is owing to his pre- 
serving power. The Master of this great family may as well be call- 
ed the Lord of it, since every member of it depends upon him for 
the support of that being he first gave them, and holds of his em- 
pire. As the right to govern resulted from creation, so it is perpet- 
uated by the preservation of things. 

5. The dominion of God is strengthened by the innumerable 
benefits he bestows upon his creatures: the benefits he confers upon 
us after creation, are not the original ground of his dominion. A 
man hath not authority over his servant from the kindness he shows 
to him, but his authority commenceth before any act of kindness, 
and is founded upon a right of purchase, conquest, or compact. 
Dominion doth not depend upon mere benefits; then inferiors 
might have dominions over superiors. A peasant may save the life 
of a prince to whom he was not subject; he hath not therefore a 
right to step up into his throne and give laws to him: and children 
that maintain their parents in their poverty, might then acquire an 
authority over them which they can never climb to; because the 
benefits they confer cannot parallel the benefits they have received 
from the authors of their lives. The bounties of God to us add 
nothing to the intrinsic right of his natural dominion; they being 
the effects of that sovereignty, as he is a rewarder and governor; as 
the benefits a prince bestows upon his favorite increases not that 
right of authority which is inherent in the crown, but strengthens 
that dominion as it stands in relation to the receiver, by increasing 
the obligation of the favorite to an observance of him, not only as 


372 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


his natural prince, but his gracious benefactor. The beneficence of 
God adds, though not an original right of power, yet a foundation 
of a stronger upbraiding the creature, if he walks in a violation and 
forgetfulness of those benefits, and pull in pieces the links of that 
ingenuous duty they call for; and an occasion of exercising of jus- 
tice in punishing the delinquent, which is a part of his empire (Isa. 1. 
2): ‘Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, the Lord hath spoken ; 
TL have nourished children, and they have rebelled against me.” 
Thus the fundamental right as Creator is made more indisputable by 
his relation as a benefactor, and more as being so after a forfeiture 
of what was enjoyed by creation. The benefits of God are innumer- 
able, and so magnificent that they cannot meet with any compensa- 
tion from the creature; and, therefore, do necessarily require a sub- 
mission from the creature, and an acknowledgment of Divine 
authority. But that benefit of redemption doth add a stronger right 
of dominion to God; since he hath not only as a Creator given them 
being and life as his creatures, but paid a price, the price of his Son’s 
blood, for their rescue from captivity ; so that he hath a sovereignty 
of grace as well as nature, and the ransomed ones belong to him as 
Redeemer as well as Creator (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20): “ Ye are not your 
own, for ye are bought with a price ;” therefore your body and your 
spirit are God’s. By this he acquired a right of another kind, and 
bought us from that uncontrollable lordship we affected over our- 
selves by the sin of Adam, that he might use us as his own peculiar 
for his own glory and service. By this redemption there results to 
God a right over our bodies, over our spirits, over our services, as 
well as by creation; and to show the strength of this right, the 
apostle repeats it, “ you are bought ;” a purchase cannot be without 
a price paid; but he adds price also, “bought with a price.” ‘T'o 
strengthen the title, purchase gave him a new right, and the great- 
ness of the price established that right. The more a man pays for 
a thing, the more usually we say, he deserves to have it, he hath 
paid enough for it; it was, indeed, price enough, and too much for 
such vile creatures as we are. 

Ill. The third thing is, The nature of this dominion. 

1. This dominion is independent. His throne is in the heavens; 
the heavens depend not upon the earth, nor God upon his creatures. 
Since he is independent in regard of his essence, he is so in his do- 
minion, which flows from the excellency and fulness of his essence ; 
as he receives his essence from none, so he derives his dominion from 
none; all other dominion except paternal authority is rooted origin- 
ally in the wills of men. The first title was the consent of the 
people, or the conquest of others by the help of those people that 
first consented ; and in the exercise of it, earthly dominion depends 
upon. assistance of the subjects, and the members being joined with 
the head carry on the work of government, and prevent civil dissen- 
sions; in the support of it, it depends upon the subjects’ contribu- 
tions and taxes; the subjects in their strength are the arms, and in 
their purses the sinews of government; but God depends upon none 
in the foundation of his government; he is not a Lord by the votes 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 378 


of his vassals.* Nor is it successively handed to him by any prede- 
cessor, nor constituted by the power of a superior; nor forced he his 
way by war and conquest, nor precariously attained it by suit or 
flattery, or bribing promises. He holds not the right of his empire 
from any other; he hath no superior to hand him to his throne, and 
settle him by commission; he is therefore called “King of kings, 
and Lord of lords,” having none above him; “A great King above 
all gods” (Ps. xcv. 8): needing no license from any when to act, nor 
direction how to act, or assistance in his action; he owes not any of 
those to any person; he was not ordered by any other to create, and 
therefore received not orders from any other to rule over what he 
hath created. He received not his power and wisdom from another, 
and therefore is not subject to any for the rule of his government. 
He only made his own subjects, and from himself hath the sole 
authority ; his own will was the cause of their beings, and his own 
will is the director of their actions. He is not determined by his 
creatures in any of his motions, but determines the creatures in all; 
his actions are not regulated by any law without him, but by a law 
within him, the law of his own nature. It is impossible he can have 
any rule without himself, because there is nothing superior to him- 
self, nor doth he depend upon any in the exercise of his govern- 
ment; he needs no servants in it, when he uses creatures: it is not 
out of want of their help, but for the manifestation of his wisdom and 
power. What he doth by his subjects, he can do by himself: “The 
government is upon his shoulder” (Isa. ix. 6), to show that he needs 
not any supporters. All other governments flow from him, all other 
authorities depend upon him; Dei Gratid, or Dei Providentid, is in 
the style of princes. As their being is derived from his power, so 
their authority is but a branch of his dominion. They are govern- 
ors by Divine providence; God is governor by his sole nature. All 
motions depend upon the first heaven, which moves all; but that 
depends upon nothing. The government of Christ depends upon 
God’s uncreated dominion, and is by commision from him; Christ 
assumed not this honor to himself, “But he that said unto him, Thou 
art my Son,” bestowed it upon him. “He put all things under his 
feet,” but not himself (1 Cor. xv. 27). “When he saith, All things 
are put under him, he is excepted, which did put all things under 
him.” He sits still as an independent governor upon his throne. 

2. This dominion is absolute. If his throne be in the heavens, 
there is nothing to control him. If he be independent, he must 
needs be absolute; since he hath no cause in conjunction with him 
as Creator, that can share with him in his right, or restrain him in 
the disposal of his creature. His authority is unlimited ; in this re- 
gard the title of “Lord” becomes not any but God properly. Ti- 
berius, though none of the best, though one of the subtilest princes, 
accounted the title of “ Lord” a reproach to him: since he was not 
absolute.” 

_ ist. Absolute in regard of freedom and liberty. (1.) Thus creation 
is a work of his mere sovereignty ; he created, because it was his plea- 


* Raynaud, Theolog. Natural, pp. 760—762. * 
* Sueton. de Tiberio, cap. 27. 


874 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


sure to create (Rev. iv. 11). He is not necessitated to do this or that. 
He might have chosen whether he would have framed an earth and 
heavens, and laid the foundations of his chambers in the waters. He 
was under no obligation to reduce things from nullity to existence. 
(2.) Preservation is the fruit of his sovereignty. When he had 
called the world to stand out, he might have ordered it to return 
into its dark den of nothingness, ripped up every part of its founda- 
tion, or have given being to many more creatures then he did. If 
you consider his absolute sovereignty, why might he not have di- 
vested Adam presently of those rational perfections wherewith he 
had endowed him? And might he not have metamorphosed him 
into some beast, and elevated some beast into a rational nature? 
Why might he not have degraded an angel to a worm, and advanced _ 
a worm to the nature and condition of an angel? Why might he 
not have revoked that grant of dominion, which he had passed to 
man over all creatures? It was free to him to permit sin to enter 
into the earth, or to have excluded:it out of he earth, as he doth 
out of heaven. (8.) Redemption is a fruit of his sovereignty. By 
his absolute sovereignty he might have confirmed all the angels in 
their standing by grace, and prevented the revolt of any of their 
members from him; and when there was a revolt both in heaven 
and earth, it was free to him to have called out his Son to assume 
the angelical, as well as the human, nature, or have exercised his do- 
minion in the destruction of men and devils, rather than in the re- 
demption of any; he was under no obligation to restore either the 
one or the other. (4.) May he not impose what terms he pleases? 
May he not impose what laws he pleases, and exact what he will of 
his creature without promising any rewards? May he not use his 
own for his own honor, as well as men use for their credit what they 
do possess by his indulgence? (5.) Affliction is an act of his sover- 
eignty. By this right of sovereignty, may not God take away any 
man’s goods, since they were his doles? As he was not indebted to 
us when he bestowed them, so he cannot wrong us when he removes 
them. He takes from us what is more his own than it is ours, and 
was never ours but by his gift, and that for a time only, not forever. 
By this right he may determine our times, put a period to our days 
when he pleases, strip us of one member, and lop off another. Man’s 
being was from him, and why should he not have a sovereignty to 
take what he had a sovereignty to give? Why should this seem 
strange to any of us, since we ourselves exercise an absolute domin- 
ion over those things in our possession, which have sense and feel 
ing, as well as over those that want it ? Doth not every man think 
he hath an absolute authority over the utensils of his house, over his 
horse, his dog, to preserve or kill him, to do what he please with 
him, without rendering any other reason than, Ji is my own? May 
not God do much more? Doth not his dominion over the work of 
his hands transcend that which a man can claim over his beast that 
he never gave life unto? He that dares dispute against God’s abso- 
lute right, fancies himself as much a god as his Creator : understands 
not the vast difference between the Divine nature and his own; be- 
tween the sovereignty of God and his own, which is all the theme 


ON GODS DOMINION. 875 


God himself discourseth upon in those stately caapters (Job. xxxviii. 
xxxix. &¢c.); not mentioning a word of Job’s sin, but only vindicat- 
ing the rights of his own authority. Nor doth Job, in his reply 
(Job xl. 4), speak of his sin, but of his natural vileness as a creature 
in the presence of his Creator. By this right, God unstops the bot- 
tles of heaven in one place, and stops them in another, causing it 
“to rain upon one city, and not upon another” (Amos iv. 7); order- 
ing the clouds to move to this or that quarter where he hath a mind 
to be a benefactor or a judge. (6.) Unequal dispensations are acts 
of his sovereignty. By this right he is patient toward those whose 
sins, by the common voice of men, deserve speedy judgments, and 
pours out pain upon those that are patterns of virtue to the world. 
By this he gives sometimes the worst of men an ocean of wealth and 
honor to swim in, and reduceth an useful and exemplary grace to a 
scanty poverty. By this he “rules the kingdoms of men,” and sets 
a crown upon the head of the basest of men (Dan. iv. 17), while he 
deposeth another that seemed to deserve a weightier diadem. This 
is, as he is the Lord of the ammunition of his thunders, and the trea- 
sures of his bounty. (7.) He may inflict what torments he pleases. 
Some say, by this right of sovereignty he may inflict what torments 
he pleaseth upon an innocent person; which, indeed, will not bear 
the nature of a punishment as an effect of justice, without the sup- 
posal of a crime; but a torment, as an effect of that sovereign right 
he hath over his creature, which is as absolute over his work as the 
‘‘notter’s” power is “over his own clay” (Jer. xviii. 6; Rom. ix. 21). 
May not the potter, after his labor, either set his “vessel” up to 
adorn his house, or knock it in pieces, and fling it upon the dung- 
hill; separate it to some noble use, or condemn it to some sordid 
service?> Is the right of God over his creatures less than that of 
the potter over his vessel, since God contributed all to his creature, 
but the potter never made the clay, which is the substance of the 
vessel, nor the water which was necessary to make it tractable, but 
only moulded the substance of it into such ashape? The vessel that 
is framed, and the potter that frames it, differ only in life: the body 
of the potter, whereby he executes his authority, is of no better a 
mould than the clay, the matter of his vessel. Shall he have so 
absolute a power over that which is so near him, and shall not 
God over that which is so infinitely distant from him? ‘The “ ves- 
sel,” perhaps, might plead for itself that it was once part of the body 
of a man, and as good as the “ potter” himself; whereas no creature 
can plead it was part of God, and as good as God himself. Though 
there be no man in the world but deserves affliction, yet the Scrip- 
ture sometimes lays affliction upon the score of God’s dominion, 
without any respect to the sin of the afflicted person. Speaking of 
a sick person (James vy. 15), “If he have committed sins, they shall 
be forgiven him ;” whereby is implied, that he might be struck into 
sickness by God, without any respect to a particular sin, but in a 
way of trial; and that his affliction sprung not from any exercise of 
Divine justice, but from his absolute sovereignty ; and so, in the case 
of the blind man, when the disciples asked for what sin it was, 
> Lessius de Perfect. Divin. pp. 66, 67. 


876 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


whether for his “own,” or his ‘parents sin,” he was born blind? 
(John ix. 8), “ Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents;” which 
speaks, in itself, not against the whole current of Scripture; but the 
words import thus much, that God, in this blindness from the birth, 
neither respected any sin of the man’s own, nor of his parents, but 
he did it as an absolute sovereign, to manifest his own glory in that 
miraculous cure which was wrought by Christ. Though afflictions 
do not happen without the desert of the creature, yet some afflic- 
tions may be sent without any particular respect to that desert, 
merely for the manifestation of God’s glory, since the creature was 
made for God himself, and his honor, and therefore may be used in 
a serviceableness to the glory of the Creator. 

2d. His dominion is absolute in regard of unlimitedness by any 
law without him. He is an absolute monarch that makes laws for 
his subjects, but is not bound by any himself, nor receives any rules 
and laws from his subjects, for the management of his government. 
But most governments in the world are bounded by laws made by 
common consent. But when kings are not limited by the laws of 
their kingdoms, yet they are bounded by the law of nature, and by 
the providence of God. But God is under no law without himself; 
his rule is within him, the rectitude and righteousness of his own 
nature; he is not under that law he hath prescribed to man. ‘The 
law was not made for a “righteous man” (1 Tim. i. 9), much less for 
a righteous God. God is his own law; his own nature is his rule, 
as his own glory is his end; himself is his end, and himself is his 
law. He is moved by novhing without himself; nothing hath the 
dominion of a motive over him but his own will, which is his rule 
for all his actions in heaven and earth. (Dan. iv. 32), “He rules in 
the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomsoever he will.” And, 
(Rom. ix. 18,) ‘‘ He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy ;” as 
all things are wrought by him according to his own eternal ideas in 
his own mind, so all is wrought by him according to the inward 
motive in his own will, which was the manifestation of his own 
honor. The greatest motives, therefore, that the best persons have 
used, when they have pleaded for any grant from God, was his 
own glory, which would be advanced by an answer of their pe- 
tition. ; 

3d. His dominion is absolute in regard of supremacy and uncon- 
trollableness. None can implead him, and cause him to render a 
reason of his actions. He is the sovereign King, ‘‘ Who may say 
unto him, What dost thou ?” (Eccles. viii. 4.) It is an absurd thing 
for any -to dispute with God. (Rom. xi. 20), ‘ Who art thou, O man, 
that repliest against God?” ‘Thou, a man, a piece of dust, to argue 
with a God incomprehensibly above thy reason, about the reason of 
his works! Let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of the earth, 
but “not with Him that fashioned them” (Isa. xlv. 9). In all the 
desolations he works, he asserts his own supremacy to silence men. 
(Ps. xlvi. 10), ‘ Be still, and know that Lam God!” Beware of any 
quarrelling motions in your minds; it is sufficient than I am God, 
that is supreme, and will not be impleaded, and censured, or worded 
‘with by any creature about what Ido. He is not bound to rendera 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 87% 


reason of any of his proceedings. Subjects are accountable to their 
princes, and princes to God, God to none; since he is not lmited by 
any superior, his prerogative is supreme. 

4th. His dominion is absolute in regard of irresistibleness. Other 
governments are bounded by law; so that what a governor hath 
strength to do, he hath not a right to do; other governors have a 
limited ability, that what they have a right to do, they have not al 
ways a strength to do; they may want a power to execute their own 
counsels. But God is destitute of neither; he hath an infinite right, 
and an infinite strength; his word is a law; he commands things to 
stand out of nothing, and they do so. ‘ He commanded,” or spake, 
6 eindr, “light to shine out of darkness’ (2 Cor. iv. 6). There is 
no distance of time between his word: “ Let there be light; and 
there was light” (Gen. i. 8). Magistrates often use not their author- 
ity, for fear of giving occasion to insurrections, which may overturn 
their empire. But if the Lord will work, “who shall let it?” (Isa. 
xliii. 19): and if God will not work, who shall force him? He can 
check and overturn all other powers; his decrees cannot be stopped, 
nor his hand held back by any: if he wills to dash the whole world 
in pieces, no creature can maintain its being against his order. He 
sets the ordinances of the heavens, and the dominion thereof in the 
earth; and sends lightnings, that they may go, and say unto him, 
“Here we are’ (Job. xxxvui. 33, 34). 

8. Yet this dominion, though it be absolute, is not tyrannical, but 
it is managed by the rules of wisdom, righteousness, and goodness. 
If his throne be in the heavens, it is pure and good: because the 
heavens are the purest parts of the creation, and influence by their 
goodness the lower earth. Since he is his own rule, and his nature 
is infinitely wise, holy, and righteous, he cannot do a thing but what 
is unquestionably agreeable with wisdom, justice, and purity. Inall 
the exercises of his sovereign right, he is never unattended with 
those perfections of his nature. Might not God, by his absolute 
power, have pardoned men’s guilt, and thrown the invading sin out 
of his creatures? but in regard of his truth pawned in his threaten- 
ing, and in regard of his justice, which demanded satisfaction, he 
would not. Might not God, by his absolute sovereignty, admit a 
man into his friendship, without giving him any grace? but in re- 
gard of the incongruity of such an act to his wisdom and holiness, 
he will not. May he not, by his absolute power, refuse to accept a 
man that desires to please him, and reject a purely innocent crea- 
ture? but in regard of his goodness and righteousness, he will not. 
Though innocence be amiable in its own nature, yet it is not neces- 
sary in regard of God’s sovereignty, that he should love it; but in 
regard of his goodness it is necessary, and he will never do other- 
wise. As God never acts to the utmost of his power, so he never 
exerts the utmost of his sovereignty : because it would be inconsist- 
ent with those other properties which render him perfectly adora- 
ble to the creature. As no intelligent creature, neither angel nor 
man, can be framed without a law in his nature, so we cannot imag- 
ine God without a law in his own nature, unless we would fancy 
him a rude, tyrannical, foolish being, that hath nothing of holiness, 


378 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


goodness, righteousness, wisdom. If he “made the heavens in wis- 
dom” (Ps. cxxxvi. 5), he made them by some rule, not by a mere 
will, but a rule within himself, not without. A wise work is never 
the result of an absolute unguided will. 

(1.) This dominion is managed by the rule of wisdom. What 
may appear to us to have no other spring than absolute sovereignty, 
would be found to have a depth of amazing wisdom, and account- 
able reason, were our short capacities long enough to fathom it. 
When the apostle had been discoursing of the eternal counsels of 
God, in seizing upon one man, and letting go another, in neglecting 
the Jews, and gathering in the Gentiles, which appears to us to be 
results only of an absolute dominion, yet he resolves not those amaz- 
ing acts into that, without taking it for granted that they were gov- 
erned by exact wisdom, though beyond his ken to see and his line 
to sound. “QO, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and 
knowledge of God; how unsearchable are his judgments, and his 
ways past finding out” (Rom. ii. 33)! There are some things in 
matters of state, that may seem to be acts of mere will, but if we 
were acquainted with the arcana imperii, the inward engines which 
_ moved them, and the ends aimed at in those undertakings, we might 
find a rich vein of prudence in them, to incline us to judge other- 
wise than bare arbitrary proceedings. The other attributes of power 
and goodness are more easily perceptible in the works of God than 
his wisdom. The first view of the creation strikes us with this sen- 
timent, that the Author of this great fabric was mighty and benefi- 
cial; but his wisdom lies deeper than to be discerned at the first 
glance, without a diligent inquiry ; as at the first casting our eyes 
upon the sea, we behold its motion, color, and something of its vast- 
ness, but we cannot presently fathom the depth of it, and understand 
those lower fountains that supply that great ocean of waters. It is 
part.of God’s sovereignity, as it is of the wisest princes, that he hath 
a wisdom beyond the reach of his subjects; it is not for a finite na- 
ture to understand an Infinite Wisdom, nor for a foolish creature 
that hath lost his understanding by the fall, to judge of the reason 
of the methods of a wise Counsellor. Yet those actions that savor 
most of sovereignty, present men with some glances of his wisdom. 
Was it mere will, that he suffered some angels to fall? But his wis- 
dom was in it for the manifestation of his justice, as it was also in 
the case of Pharaoh. Was it mere will, that he suffered sin to be 
committed by man? Was not his wisdom in this for the discovery 
of his mercy, which never had been known without that, which 
should render a creature miserable? ‘He hath concluded them all in 
unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all” (Rom. xi. 32). Though 
God had such an absolute right, to have annihilated the world as 
soon as ever he had made it, yet how had this consisted with his 
wisdom, to have erected a creature after his own image one day, and 
despised it so much the next, as to cashier it from being? What 
wisdom had it been to make a thing only to destroy it; to repent of 
his work as soon as ever it came out of his hands, without any occa 
sion offered by the creature? If God be supposed to be Creator, he 
must be supposed to have an end in creation; what end can that be 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 379 


but himself and his own glory, the manifestation of the perfections 
of his nature? What perfection could have been discovered in so 
quick an annihilation, but that of his power in creating, and of his 
sovereignty in snatching away the being of his rational creature, be- 
fore it had laid the methods of acting? What wisdom to make a 
world, and a reasonable creature for no use; not to praise and honor 
him, but to be broken in pieces, and destroyed by him? 

(2.) His sovereignty is managed according to the rule of righteous- 
ness. Worldly princes often fancy tyranny and oppression to be the 
chief marks of sovereignty, and think their sceptres not beautiful 
till died in blood, nor the throne secure till established upon slain 
carcasses. But “justice and judgment” are the foundation of the 
throne of God (Ps. Ixxxix. 14); alluding perhaps to the supporters 
of arms and thrones, which among princes are the figures of lions, 
emblems of courage, as Solomon had (1 Kings, x. 19). But God 
makes not so much might, as right, the support of his. He sits on 
a “throne of holiness” (Ps. xlvi. 8). As he reigns over the heath- 
ens, referring to the calling of the Gentiles after the rejecting of the 
Jews; the Psalmist here praising the righteousness of it, as the 
Apostle had the unsearchable wisdom of it (Rom. xi. 83). “In all 
his ways he is righteous” (Ps. cxlv. 17): in his ways of terror as well 
as those of sweetness; in those works wherein little else but that of 
his sovereignty appears to us. It is always linked with his holiness, 
that he will not do by his absolute right anything but what is con- 
formable to it: since his dominion is founded upon the excellency 
of his nature, he will not do anything but what is agreeable to it, 
and becoming his other perfections. Though he be an absolute soy- 
ereign, he is not an arbitrary governor; “Shall not the Judge of all 
the earth do right” (Gen. xviii. 25)? 2. e. it is impossible but he should 
act righteously in every punctilio of his government, since his right- 
eousness capacitates him to be a judge, not a tyrant, of all the earth. 
The heathen poets represented their chief god Jupiter with Themis, 
or Right, sitting by him upon his throne in all his orders. God 
cannot by his absolute sovereignty command some things, because 
they are directly against unchangeable righteousness; as to com- 
mand a creature to hate or blaspheme the Creator, not to own him 
nor praise him. It would be a manifest unrighteousness to order the 
creature not to own him, upon whom he depends both in its being 
and well-being; this would be against that natural duty which is in- 
dispensably due from every rational creature to God. This would 
be to order him to lay aside his reason, while he retains it; to dis- 
own him to be the Creator, while man remains his creature. This 
is repugnant to the nature of God, and the true nature of the crea- 
ture; or to exact anything of man, but what he had given hima 
capacity, in his original nature, to perform. If any command were 
above our natural power, it would be unrighteous; as to command 
a man to grasp the globe of the earth, to stride over the sea, to lave 
out the waters of the ocean; these things are impossible, and become 
not the righteousness and wisdom of God to enjoin. There can be 
no obligation on man to an impossibility. God had a free dominion 
over nullity before the creation; he could call it out into the being 


380 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of man and beast, but he could not do anything in creation foolishly, 
because of his infinite wisdom ; nor could he by the right of his ab- 
solute sovereignty make man sinful, because of his infinite purity. 
As it is impossible for him not to be sovereign, it is impossible for 
him to deny his Deity and his purity. Itis lawful for God to do 
what he will, but his will being ordered by the righteousness of his 
nature, as infinite as his will, he cannot do anything but what is just; 
and therefore in his dealing with men, you find him in Scripture 
_ submitting the reasonableness and equity of his proceedings to the 
| judgment of his depraved creatures, and the inward dictates of their 
, own conscience. ‘ And now, O inhabitants of J erusalem, and men 
of Judah, judge, I pray you, between me and my vineyard” (Isa. v. 
3). Though God be the great Sovereign of the world, yet he acts 
not in a way of absolute sovereignty. He rules by law; he is a 
‘‘ Lawgiver” as well as a “ King” (Isa. xxxiii. 22). It had been re- 
pugnant to the nature of a rational creature to be ruled otherwise; 
to be governed as a beast, this had been to frustrate those faculties 
of will and understanding which had been given him. To conclude 
this: when we say, God can do this or that, or command this or that, 
his authority is not bounded and limited properly. Who can reason- 
ably detract from his almightiness, because he cannot do anything 
which savors of weakness ; and what detracting is it from his author- 
ity, that he cannot do anything unseemly for the dignity of his na- 
ture? It is rather from the infiniteness of his righteousness than 
the straitness of his authority ; at most it is but a voluntary bound- 
ing his dominion by the law of his own holiness. 

(3.) His sovereignty is managed according to the rule of goodness. 
Some potentates there have been in the world, that have loved to 
suck the blood, and drink the tears, of their subjects; that would 
rule more by fear than love; like Clearchus, the tyrant of Heraclea, 
who bore the figure of a thunderbolt instead of a sceptre, and named 
his son Thunder, thereby to tutor him to terrify his subjects.« But 
as God’s throne is a throne of holiness, so it is a “throne of grace” 
(Heb. iv. 16), a throne encircled with a rainbow : “In sight like to 
an emerald” (Rey. iv. 23): an emblem of the covenant, that hath the 
pleasantness of a green color, delightful to the eye, betokening mercy. 
Though his nature be infinitely excellent above us, and his power 
infinitely transcendent over us, yet the majesty of his government 
is tempered with an unspeakable goodness. He acts not so much as 
an absolute Lord, as a gracious Sovereign and obliging Benefactor. 
He delights not to make his subjects slaves; exacts not from them 
any servile and fearful, but a generous and cheerful, obedience. He 
requires them not to fear, or worship him so much for his power, as 
his goodness. He requires not of a rational creature anything re- 
pugnant to the honor, dignity, and principles of such a nature; not 
anything that may shame, disgrace it, and make it weary of its own 
being, and the service it owes to its Sovereign. He draws by the 
cords of a man; his goodness renders his laws as sweet as honey or 
the honey-comb to an unvitiated palate and a renewed mind. And 
though it be granted he hath a full dispose of his creature, as the 


¢ Causin, Poly-Histor. lib. iv. cap. 22. 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 381 


potter of his vessel, and might by his absolute sovereignty inflict 
upon an innocent an eternal torment, yet his goodness will never 
permit him to use this sovereign right to the hurt of a creature that 
deserves it not. If God should cast an innocent creature into the 
furnace of his wrath, who can question him? But who can think 
that his goodness will do so, since that is as infinite as his authority ? 
As not to punish the sinner would be a denial of his justice, so te 
torment an innocent would be a denial of his goodness. A man 
hath an absolute power over his beast, and may take away his life, 
and put him to a great deal of pain; but that moral virtue of pity 
and tenderness would not permit him to use this right, but when it 
conduceth to some greater good than that can be evil; either for the 
good of man, which is the end of the creature, or for the good of 
the poor beast itself, to rid him of a greater misery ; none but a sav- 
age nature, a disposition to be abhorred, would torture a poor beast 
merely for his pleasure. It is as much against the nature of God to 
punish one eternally, that hath not deserved it, as it is to deny him- 
self, and act anything foolishly and unbeseeming his other perfections, 
which render him majestical and adorable. To afflict an innocent 
creature for his own good, or for the good of the world, as in the 
case of the Redeemer, is so far from being against goodness, that it 
is the highest testimony of his tender bowels to the sons of men. 
God, though he be mighty, “withdraws not his eyes,” z. e. his tender 
respect, ‘from the righteous” (Job, xxxvi. 5, 7—10). And if he 
“bind them in fetters,” it is to “show them their transgressions,” and 
‘‘open their ear to discipline,” and renewing commands, in a more 
sensible strain, ‘to depart from iniquity.” What was said of Fab- 
ritius, ‘‘ You may as soon remove the sun from its course, as Fabri- 
tius from his honesty,” may be of God: you may as soon dash in 
pieces his throne, as separate his goodness from his sovereignty. 

4, This sovereignty is extensive over all creatures. He rules ail, 
as the heavens do over the earth. He is ‘‘ King of worlds, King of 
ages,” as the word translated “eternal” signifies (1 Tim. i. 17), 10 é 
Bootes tay aidywrv; and the same word is so translated (Heb. i. 2), 
‘“By whom also he made the worlds.” The same word is rendered 
“worlds” (Heb. xi. 3): “The worlds were framed by the Word of 
God.” God is King of ages or worlds, of the invisible world and the 
sensible; of all from the beginning of their creation, of whatsoever 
is measured by a time. It extends over angels and devils, over 
wicked and good, over rational and irrational creatures; all things 
bow down under his hand; nothing can be exempted from him: 
because there is nothing but was extracted by him from nothing into 
being. All things essentially depend upon him; and, therefore, 
must be essentially subject to him; the extent of his dominion flows 
from the perfection of his essence; since his essence is unlimited, his 
royalty cannot be restrained. His authority is as void of any im- 
perfection as his essence is; it reaches out to all points of the heaven 
above, and the earth below. Other princes reign in a spot of ground. 
Hivery worldly potentate hath the confines of his dominions. The 
Pyrenean mountains divide France from Spain, and the Alps, Italy 
from France. None are called kings absolutely, but kings of this or 


382 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


that place. But God is the King; the spacious firmament limits 
not his dominion ; if we could suppose him bounded by any place, 
in regard of his presence, yet he could never be out of his own do- 
minion ; whatsoever he looks upon, wheresoever he were, would be 
under his rule. arthly kings may step out of their own country 
into the territory of a neighbor prince; and as one leaves his country, 
so he leaves his dominion behind him; but heaven and earth, and 
every particle of both, is the territory of God. ‘He hath prepared 
his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.” 

(1.) The heaven of angels, and other excellent creatures, belong to 
his authority. He is principally called “The Lord of Hosts,” in re- 
lation to his entire command over the angelical legions: therefore, 
ver. 21, following the text, they are called his “ hosts,” and “ minis- 
ters that do his pleasure.” Jacob called him so before (Gen. xxxii. 
1, 2). When he met the angels of God, he calls them “the host of 
God;” and the Evangelist, long after, calls them so (Luke, ii. 18): 
‘‘A multitude of the heavenly host, praising God ;” and all this host 
he commands (Isa. xlv. 12): ““My hands have stretched out the 
heavens, and all their host have I commanded.” He employs them 
all in his service; and when he issues out his orders to them to do 
this or that, he finds no resistance of his will. And the inanimate 
creatures in heaven are at his beck; they are his armies in heaven, 
disposed in an excellent order in their several ranks (Ps. exlvii. 4): 
‘‘ He calls the stars by name ;” they render a due obedience to him as 
servants to their master, when he singles them out, ‘and calls them 
by name,” to do some special service; he calls them out to their 
several offices, as the general of an army appoints the station of 
every regiment in a battalia. Or “he calls them by name,” ¢@. e. he 
imposeth names upon them, a sign of dominion: the giving names 
to the inferior creatures being the first act of Adam’s derivative do- 
minion over them. These are under the sovereignty of God. The 
stars, by their influences, fight against Sisera (Judges, v. 20). And 
the sun holds in its reins, and stands stone still, to light Joshua to a 
complete victory (Josh. x. 12). They are all marshalled in their 
ranks to receive his word of command, and fight in close order, as 
being desirous to have a share in the ruin of the enemies of their 
Sovereign. And those creatures which mount up from the earth, 
and take their place in the lower heavens, vapors, whereof hail and 
snow are formed, are part of the army, and do not only receive, but 
fulfil, his word of command (Ps. exlviii. 8). These are his stores 
and magazines of judgment against a time of trouble, and “a day of 
battle and war” (Job, xxxviil. 22. 23). The sovereignty of God is 
visible in all their motions, in their going and returning. Ifhe says, 
Go, they go; if he say, Come, they come; if he say, do this, they 
gird up their loins, and stand stiff to their duty. 

(2.) The hell of devils belong to his authority. They have cast 
themselves out of the arms of his grace into the furnace of his jus- 
tice; they have, by their revolt, forfeited the treasure of his good- 
ness, but cannot exempt themselves from the sceptre of his dominion ; 
when they would not own him as a Lord Father, they are under 
him as a Lord Judge; they are cast out of his affection, bu! not 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 883 


freed from his yoke. He rules over the good angels as his subjects, 
over the evil ones as his rebels. _ In whatsoever relation he stands, 
either as a friend or enemy, he never loses that of a Lord. A prince 
is the lord of his criminals as well as of his loyalest subjects. By 
this right of his sovereignty, he uses them to punish some, and be 
the occasion of benefit to others: on the wicked he employs them as 
instruments of vengeance; towards the godly, as in the case of Job, 
as an instrument of kindness for the manifestation of his sincerity 
against the intention of that malicious executioner. Though the 
devils are the executioners of his justice, it is not by their own au- 
thority, but God’s; as those that are employed either to rack or ex- 
ecute a malefactor, are subjects to the prince not only in the quality 
of men, but in the execution of their function. The devil, by draw- 
ing men to sin, acquires no right to himself over the sinner: for 
man by sin offends not the devil, but God, and becomes guilty of 
. punishment under God.¢ When, therefore, the devil is used by God 
for the punishment of any, it is an act of his sovereignty for the man- 
ifestation of the order of his justice. And as most nations use the 
_vilest persons in offices of execution, so doth God those vile spirits. 
He doth not ordinarily use the good angels in those offices of ven- 
geance, but in the preservation of his people. When he would solely 
aa he employs ‘evil angels” (Ps. Ixxviii. 49), a troop of devils. 

is sovereignty is extended over the “deceiver and the deceived” 
(Job, xii. 16); over both the malefactor and the executioner, the 
devil and his prisoner. He useth the natural malice of the devils 
for his own just ends, and by his sovereign authority orders them 
to be the executioners of his judgments upon their own vassals, as 
well as sometimes inflicters of punishments upon his own servants. 

(3.) The earth of men and other creatures belongs to his authority 
(Ps. xlvii. 7). God is King of “all the earth,” and rules to the 
“ends” of it (Ps. lix. 18). Ancient atheists confined God’s dominion 
to the heavenly orbs, and bounded it within the circuit of the celes- 
tial sphere (Job, xxii. 14): “ He walks in the circuit of heaven,” 4. e. 
he exerciseth his dominion only there. Pedum positio was the sign 
of the possession of a piece of land, and the dominion of the possessor 
of it; and land was resigned by such a ceremony, as now, by the 
delivery of a twig or turf.e But his dominion extends, 

1st. Over the least creatures. All the creatures of the earth are 
listed in Christ’s muster-roll, and make up the number of his regi- 
ments: He hath an host on earth as well as in heaven (Gen. u. 1): 
“The heavens and earth were finished, and all the host of them.” 
And they are “all his servants” (Ps. cxiv. 91), and move at his 
pleasure. And he vouchsafes the title of his army to the locust, 
caterpillar, and palmer worm (Joel, ii. 25); and describes their motions 
by military words, “ climbing the walls, marching, not breaking their 
ranks” (ver. 7). He hath the command, as a great general, over the 
highest angel and the meanest worm ; all the kinds of the smallest 
insects he presseth for his service. By this sovereignty he muzzled 
the devouring nature of the fire to preserve the three children, and 
let it loose to consume their adversaries; and if he speaks the word, 

4 Suarez. Vol. II. lib. viii. cap, 20. p. 786. © Boldue, in loc. 


® 
884 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


the stormy waves are hushed, as if they had no principle of rage 
within them (Ps. lxxxix. 9). Since the meanest creature attains its 
end, and no arrow that God hath by his power shot into the world 
but hits the mark he aimed at, we must conclude, that there is a 
sovereign hand that governs all: not a spot of earth, or air, or water 
in the world, but is his possession; not a creature in any element 
but is his subject. 

2d. His dominion .extends over men. It extends over the 
highest potentate, as well as the meanest peasant; the proudest 
monarch is no more exempt than the most languishing beggar. 
He lays not aside his authority to please the prince, nor strains 
it up to terrify the indigent. ‘He accepts not the persons of 
princes, nor regards the rich more than the poor; for they are all 
the work of his hand” (Job, xxxiv. 19). Both the powers and 
weaknesses, the gallantry and peasantry of the earth, stand and fall 
at his pleasure. Man, in innocence, was under his authority as his 
creature; and man, in his revolt, is further under his authority 
as a criminal: as a person is under the authority of a prince, as a 
governor, while he obeys his laws; and further under the authority 
of the prince, as a judge, when he violates his laws. Man is under 
God’s dominion in everything, in his settlement, in his calling, in the 
ordering his very habitation (Acts, xvii. 26): ‘He determines the 
bounds of their habitations.” He never yet permitted any to be 
universal monarch in the world, nor over the fourth part of it, though 
several, in the pride of their heart, have designed and attempted it: 
the pope, who hath bid the fairest for it in spirituals, never attained 
it; and when his power was most flourishing, there were multitudes 
that would never acknowledge his authority. | 

3d. But especially this dominion, in the peculiarity of its extent, 
is seen in the exercise of it over the spirits and hearts of men. 
Karthly governors have, by his indulgence, a share with him in a do- 
minion over men’s bodies, upon which account he graceth princes 
and judges with the title of “ gods” (Ps. lxxxii. 6); but the highest 
prince is but a prince “according to the flesh,” as the apostle calls 
masters in relation to their servants (Col. i. 22). 

God is the sovereign; man rules over the beast in man, the body; 
and God rules over the man in man, the soul. It sticks not in the 
outward surface, but pierceth to the inward marrow. It is impossible 
God should be without this; if our wills were independent of him, 
we were in some sort equal with himself, in part gods, as well as 
creatures. It is impossible a creature, either in whole or in part, can 
be exempted from it; since he is the fashioner of hearts as well as 
of bodies. He is the Father of spirits, and therefore hath the right 
of a paternal dominion over them. When he established man lord 
of the other creatures, he did not strip himself of the propriety ; and 
when he made man a free agent, and lord of the acts of his will, he 
did not divest himself of the sovereignty. His sovereignty is seen, 

[1.] In gifting the spirits of men. Harthly magistrates have hands 
too short to inspire the hearts of their subjects with worthy senti- 
ments: when they confer an employment, they are not able to convey 
an ability with it fit for the station: they may as soon frame a statue 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 385° 


of liquid water, and gild, or paint it over with the costliest colors, as 
impart to any a state-head for a state-ministry. But when God 
chooseth a Saul from so mean an employment as seeking of asses, he 
can treasure up in him a spirit fit for government; and fire David, 
in age a stripling, and by education a shepherd, with courage to en- 
counter, and skill to defeat, a massy Goliath. And when he designs 
a person for glory, to stand before his throne, he can put a new and 
a royal spirit into him (Ezek. xxxvi. 26). God only can infuse habits 
into the soul, to capacitaté it to act nobly and generously. 

[2.] His sovereignty is seen in regard of the inclinations of men’s 
wills. No creature can immediately work upon the will, to guide it 
to what point he pleaseth, though mediately it may, by proposing 
reasons which may master the understanding, and thereby determine 
the will. But God bows the hearts of men, by the efficacy of his 
dominion, to what centre he pleaseth. When the more overweaning 
sort of men, that thought their own heads as fit for a crown as Saul’s, 
scornfully despised him; yet-God touched the hearts of a band of 
men. to follow and adhere to him (1 Sam. x. 26, 27). When the anti- 
christian whore shall be ripe for destruction, God shall “ put it into 
the heart” of the ten horns or kings, ‘‘ to hate the whore, burn her 
with fire, and fulfil his will” (Rev. xvii. 16,17). He “fashions the 
hearts’ alike, and tunes one string to answer another, and both to 
answer his own design (Ps. xxxiii. 15). And while men seem to 
gratify their own ambition and malice, they execute the will of God, 
by his secret touch upon their spirits, guiding their inclinations to 
serve the glorious manifestation of truth. While the Jews would, 
in a reproachful disgrace to Christ, crucify two thieves with him, to 
render him more incapable to have any followers, they accomplished 
a prophecy, and brought to light a mark of the Messiah, whereby 
he had been charactered in one of their prophets, that he should be 
‘numbered among transgressors” (Isa. lit. 12). He can make a man 
of not willing, willing; the wills of all men are in his hand; 7. e. 
under the power of his sceptre, to retain or let go upon this or that 
errand, to bend this or that way ; as water is carried by pipes to what 
house or place the owner of it is pleased to order. “The king’s 
heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of waters; he turns 
it whithersoever he will” (Prov. xxi. 1) without any limitation. He 
speaks of the heart of princes; because, in regard of their height, 
they seem to be more absolute, and impetuous as waters; yet God 
holds them in his hand, under his dominion ; turns them to acts of 
clemency or severity, like waters, either to overflow and damage, or 
to refresh and fructify. He can convey a spirit to them, or “ cut it 
off” from them (Ps. Ixxvi. 12). It is with reference to his efficacious 
power, in graciously turning the heart of Paul, that the apostle breaks 
off his discourse of the story of his conversion, and breaks out into 
a magnifying and glorifying of God’s dominion. “Now unto the 
King eternal,” &¢. “be honor and glory forever and ever” (1 Tim. i. 
17). Our hearts are more subject to the Divine sovereignty than our 
members in their motions are subject to our own wills. ‘As we can 
move our hand east or west to any quarter of the world, so can God 
bend our wills to what mark he pleases. The second cause in every 

VOL. 11.—28 


386 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


motion depends upon the first; and that will, being a second cause, 
may be furthered or hindered in its inclinations or executions by God; 
he can bend or unbend it, and change it from one actual inclination 
to another. It is as much under his authority and power to move, 
or hinder, as the vast engine of the heavens is in its motion or stand- 
ing still, which he can affect by a word. The work depends upon 
the workman; the clock upon the artificer for the motions of it. 

[3.] His dominion is seen in regard of terror or comfort. The 
heart or conscience is God’s special throne*on earth, which he hath 
reserved to himself, and never indulged human authority to sit upon 
it. He solely orders this in ways of conviction or comfort. He can 
flash terror into men’s spirits in the midst of their earthly jollities, 
and put death into the pot of conscience, when they are boiling up 
themselves in a high pitch of worldly delights, and can raise men’s 
spirits above the sense of torment under racks and flames. He can 
draw a hand-writing not only in the outward chamber, but the in- 
ward closet; bring the rack into the inwards of aman. None can 
infuse comfort when he writes bitter things, nor can any fill the heart 
with gall, when he drops in honey. Men may order outward duties, 
but they cannot unlock the conscience, and constrain men to think 
them duties which they are forced, by human laws, outwardly to act: 
and as the laws of earthly princes are bounded by the outward man, 
so do their executions and punishments reach no further than the 
ease of the body : but God can run upon the inward man, as a giant, 
and inflict wounds and gashes there. 

5. It is an eternal dominion. In regard of the exercise of it, it 
was not from eternity, because there was not from eternity any crea- 
ture under the government of it; but in regard of the foundation 
of it, his essence, his excellency, it is eternal; as God was from 
eternity almighty, but there was no exercise or manifestation of it till 
he began to create. Men are kings only for a time; their lives ex- 
pire like a lamp, and their dominion is extinguished with their lives ; 
they hand their empire by succession to others, but many times it 1s 
snapped off before they are cold in their graves. How are the fa- 
mous empires of the Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, and Greeks, mould- 
ered away, and their place knows them no more! and how are the 
wings of the Roman eagle cut, and that empire which overspread a 
great part of the world, hath lost most of its feathers, and is confined 
to a narrower compass! The dominion of God flourisheth from one 
generation to another: “He sits King forever” (Ps. xxix. 10). His 
“session” signifies the establishment, and “forever” the duration ; 
and he “sits now,” his sovereignty is as absolute, as powerful as ever. 
How many lords and princes hath this or that kingdom had! in how 
many families hath the sceptre lodged! when as God hath had an 
uninterrupted dominion; as he hath been always the same in his 
essence, he hath been always glorious in his sovereignty: among 
men, he that is lord to-day, may be stripped of it to-morrow; the 
dominions in the world vary; he that is a prince may see his royalty 
upon the wings, and feel himself laden with fetters ; and a prisoner 
may be “lifted from his dungeon” to a throne. But there can be no 
diminution of God’s government; ‘ His throne is from generation 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 387 


to generation” (Lam. v. 19); it cannot be shaken: his sceptre, like 
Aaron’s rod, is always green; it cannot be wrested out of his hands; 
none raised him to it, none therefore can depose him from it; it bears 
the same splendor im all human affairs; he is an eternal, an “immortal 
King” (1 Tim. i. 17); as he is eternally mighty, so he is eternally 
sovereign ; and, being an eternal King, he is a King that gives not 
a momentary and perishing, but a durable and everlasting life, to 
them that obey him: a durable and eternal punishment to them that 
resist him. 

IV. Wherein this dominion and sovereign consists, and how it is 
manifested. 

First. The first act of sovereignty is the making laws. ‘This is 
essential to God; no creature’s will can be the first rule to the crea- 
ture, but only the will of God: he only can prescribe man his duty, 
and establish the rule of it; hence the law is called “the royal law” 
(James, 11. 8): it being the first and clearest manifestation of sover- 
elgnty, as the power of legislation is of the authority of a prince. 
Both are joined together in Isa. lin. 22: “The Lord is our Lawgiver ; 
the Lord is our King;” legislative power being the great mark of 
royalty. God, as King, enacts his laws by his own proper authority, 
and his law is a declaration of his own sovereignty, and of men’s 
moral subjection to him, and dependence on him. His sovereignty 
doth not appear so much in his promises as in his precepts: a man’s 
power over another is not discovered by promising, for a promise 
doth not suppose the promiser either superior or inferior to the per- 
son to whom the promise is made.f It is not an exercising authority 
over another, but over a man’s self; no man forceth another to the 
acceptance of his promise, but only proposeth and encourageth to an 
embracing of it. But commanding supposeth always an authority 
in the person giving the precept; it obligeth the person to whom the 
command is directed; a promise obligeth the person by whom the 
promise is made. God, by his command, binds the creature; by his 
promise he binds himself; he stoops below his sovereignty, to lay 
obligations upon his own majesty; by a precept he binds the creature, 
by a promise he encourageth the creature to an observance of his pre- 
cept: what laws God makes, man is bound, by virtue of his creation, 
to observe; that respects the sovereignty of God: what promises 
God makes, man is bound to believe; but that respects the faithful- 
ness of God. God manifested his dominion more to the Jews than 
to any other people in the world; he was their Lawgiver, both as 
they were a church and a commonwealth: as a church, he gave them 
ceremonial laws for the regulating their worship; as a state, he gave 
them judicial laws for the ordermg their civil affairs; and as both, 
he gave them moral laws, upon which both the laws of the church 
and state were founded. This dominion of God, in this regard, will 
be manifest, 

(1.) In the supremacy of it. The sole power of making laws doth 
originally reside in him (James, iv. 12); “There is one Lawgiver, 
who is able to save, and to destroy.” By his own law he judges of 
the eternal states of men, and no law of man is obligatory, but as it 

f Suarez. de Legib. p. 23. 


888 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


is agreeable to the Jaws of this supreme Lawgiver, and pursuant to 
his righteous rules for the government of the world. The power 
that the potentates of the world have to make laws is but derivative 
from God. If their dominion be from him, as it is, for “ by him 
kings reign” (Prov. viii. 15), their legislative power, which is a prime 
flower of their sovereignty, is derived from him also: and the apos- 
tle resolves it into this original when he orders us to be “‘subject to 
the higher powers, not only for wrath, but for conscience sake” (Rom. 
xiu. 5). Conscience, in its operations, solely respects God; and 
therefore, when it is exercised as the principle of obedience to the 
laws of men, it is not with respect to them, singly considered, but as 
the majesty of God appears in their station and in their decrees. 
This power of giving laws was acknowledged by the heathen to be 
solely in God by way of original; and therefore the greatest law- 
givers among the heathen pretended their laws to be received from 
some deity or supernatural power, by special revelation: now, 
whether they did this seriously, acknowledging themselves this part 
of the dominion of God,—for it is certain that whatsoever just orders 
were issued out by princes in the world, was by the secret influ- 
-ence of God upon their spirits (Prov. vii. 15): “ By me princes de- 
cree justice ;” by the secret conduct of Divine wisdom,—or whether 
they pretended it only as a public engine, to enforce upon people 
the observance of their decrees, and gain a greater credit to their 
edicts, yet this will result from it, that the people in general enter- 
tained this common notion, that God was the great Lawgiver of the 
world. The first founders of their societies could never else have so 
absolutely gained upon them by such a pretence. There was always 
a revelation of a law from the mouth of God in every age: the ex- 
hortation of Eliphaz to Job (Job, xxii. 22), of receiving a ‘‘ law from 
the mouth” of God, at the time before the moral law was published, 
had been a vain exhortation had there been no revelation of the 
mind of God in all ages. 

(2.) The dominion of God is manifest in the extent of his laws. 
As he is the Governor and Sovereign of the whole world, so he en- 
acts laws for the whole world. One prince cannot make laws for 
another, unless he makes him his subject by right of conquest; 
Spain cannot make laws for England, or England for Spain; but God 
having the supreme government, as King over all, is a Lawgiver to 
all, to irrational, as well as rational creatures. The “heavens have 
their ordinances” (Job, xxxviii. 83); all creatures have a law im- 
printed on their beings; rational creatures have Divine statutes 
copied in their heart: for men, it is clear (Rom. ii. 14), every son of 
Adam, at his coming into the world, brings with him a law in his 
nature, and when reason clears itself up from the clouds of sense, he 
can make some difference between good and evil; discern something 
of fit and just. Every man finds a law within him that checks him 
if he offends it: none are without a legal indictment and a legal exe- 
cutioner within them; God or none was the Author of this as a 
sovereion Lord, in establishing a law in man at the same time, 
wherein, as an Almighty Creator, he imparted a being. This law 
proceeds from God’s general power of governing, as he 1s the Author 


ON GOD’S DOMINION, 889 


of nature, and binds not barely as it is the reason of man, but by the 
authority of God, as it is a law engraven on his conscience: and no 
doubt but a law was given to the angels; God did not govern those 
intellectual creatures as he doth brutes, and in a way inferior to his 
rule of man. Some sinned; all might have sinned in regard to the 
changeableness of their nature. Sin cannot be but against some 
rule; “where there is no law, there is no transgression ;” what that 
law was is not revealed; but certainly it must be the same in part 
with the moral law, so far as it agreed with their spiritual natures ; 
a love to God, a worship of him, and a love to one another in their 
societies and persons. 

(3.) The dominion of God is manifest in the reason of some laws, 
which seem to be nothing else than purely his own will. Some 
laws there are for which a reason may be rendered from the nature 
of the thing enjoined, as to love, honor, and worship God: for others, 
none but this, God will have it so: such was that positive law to Adam 
of “not eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 
ui. 17), which was merely an asserting his own dominion, and was 
different from that law of nature God had written in his heart. No 
other reason of this seems to us, but a resolve to try man’s obedience 
in a way of absolute sovereignty, and to manifest’ his right over all 
creatures, to reserve what he pleased to himself, and permit the use 
of what he pleased to man, and to signify to man that he was to de- 
pend on him, who was his Lord, and not on his own will. There 
was no more hurt in itself, for Adam to have eaten of that, than of 
any other in the garden; the fruit was pleasant to the eye, and good 
for food; but God would show the right he had over his own goods, 
and his authority over man, to reserve what he pleases of his own 
creation from his touch; and since man could not claim a propriety 
in anything, he was to meddle with nothing but by the leave of his 
Sovereign, either discovered by a special or general license. Thus 
God showed himself the Lord of man, and that man was but his 
steward, to act by his orders. If God had forbidden man the use 
of more trees in the garden, his command had been just; since, as a 
sovereign Lord, he might dispose of his own goods; and when he 
had granted him the whole compass of that pleasant garden, and the 
whole world round about for him and his posterity, it was a more 
tolerable exercise of his dominion to reserve this “one tree,” as a 
mark of his sovereignty, when he had left “all others” to the use of 
Adam. He reserved nothing to himself, as Lord of the manor, but 
this; and Adam was prohibited nothing else but this one, as a sign 
of his subjection. Now for this no reason can be rendered by any 
man but merely the will of God; this was merely a fruit of his do- 
minion. For the moral laws a reason may be rendered; to love 
God hath reason to enforce it besides God’s will; wz., the excellency 
of his nature, and the greatness and multitudes of his benefits. 'T'o 
love our neighbor hath enforcing reasons; vzz., the conjunction in 
blood, the preservation of human society, and the need we may 
stand in of their love ourselves: but no reason can be assigned of 
this positive command about the tree of knowledge of good and evil, 
but the pleasure of God. It was a branch of his pure dominion to 


390 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


but merely the pleasure of God. It wasa branch of his pure dominion 
to try man’s obedience, and a mark of his goodness to try it by so 
and light a precept, when he might have extended his authority 
further. Had not God given this or the like order, his absolute 
dominion had not been so conspicuous. It is true, Adam had a law 
of nature in him, whereby he was obliged to perpetual obedience ; 
and though it was a part of God’s dominion to implant it in him, yet 
lus supreme dominion over the creatures had not been so visible to 
man but by this, or a precept of the same kind. What was com- 
manded or prohibited by the law of nature, did bespeak a comeliness 
in itself, it appeared good or evil to the reason of man; but this was 
neither good nor evil in itself, it received its sole authority from the 
absolute will of God, and nothing could result from the fruit itself, 
as a reason why man should not taste it, but only the sole will of 
God. And as God’s dominion was most conspicuous in this precept, 
so man’s obedience had been most eminent in observing it: for in 
his obedience to it, nothing but the sole power and authority of God, 
which is the proper rule of obedience, could have been respected, not 
any reason from the thing itself. To this we may refer some other 
commands, as that of appointing the time of solemn and public wor- 
ship, the seventh day; though the worship of God be a part of the 
law of nature, yet the appointing a particular day, wherein he would 
be more formally and solemnly acknowledged than on other days, 
was grounded upon his absolute right of legislation: for there was 
nothing in the time itself that could render that day more holy than 
another, though God respected his “ finishing the work of creation” 
in his institution of that day (Gen. 1. 3). Such were the ceremonial 
commands of sacrifices and washings under the law, and the com- 
mands of sacraments under the gospel: the one to last till the first 
coming of Christ and his passion; the other to last till the second 
coming of Christ and his trrumph. Thus he made natural and un- 
avoidable uncleannesses to be sins, and the touching a dead body to 
be pollution, which in their own nature were not so. 

(4.) The dominion of God appears in the moral law, and his 
majesty in publishing it. As the law of nature was writ by his own 
fingers in the nature of man, so it was engraven by his own finger 
in the “tables of stone” (Hixod. xxxi. 18), which 1s very emphatic- 
ally expressed to be a mark of God’s dominion. “ And the tables 
were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God en- 
graven upon the tables” (Exod. xxx. 16); and when the first tables 
were broken, though he orders Moses to frame the tables, yet the 
writing of the law he reserves to himself (Exod. xxxiv. 1). It is 
not said of any part of the Scripture, that it was writ by the finger 
of God, but only of the Decalogue: herein he would have his soy- 
ereionty eminently appear; it was published by God in state, with 
a numerous attendance of his heavenly militia (Deut. xxxii. 2); and 
the artillery of heaven was shot off at the solemnity; and therefore 
it is called a fiery law, coming from his right hand, 7. e. his sovereign 
power. It was published with all the marks of supreme majesty. 

(5.) The dominion of God appears in the obligation of the law, 
which reacheth the conscience. ‘The laws of every prince are fram- 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 391 


ed for the outward conditions of men; they do not by their author. 
ity bind the conscience; and what obligations do result from them 
upon the conscience, is either from their being the same immediately 
with Divine laws, or as they are according to the just power of the 
magistrate, founded on the law of God. Conscience hath a protec- 
tion from the King of kings, and cannot be arrested by any human 
power. God hath given man but an authority over half the man, 
and the worst half too, that which is of an earthly original; but re- 
served the authority over the better and more heavenly half to him- 
self. ‘I'he dominion of earthly princes extends only to the bodies of 
men; they have no authority over the soul, their punishment and 
rewards cannot reach it: and therefore their laws, by their single 
authority, cannot bind it, but as they are coincident with the law of 
God, or as the equity of them is subservient to the preservation of 
human society, a regular and righteous thing, which is the divine 
end in government; and so they bind, as they have relation to God 
as the supreme magistrate. ‘The conscience is only intelligible to 
God in its secret motions, and therefore only guidable by God; God 
only pierceth into the conscience by his eye, and therefore only can 
conduct it by his rule. Man cannot tell whether we embrace this 
law in our heart and consciences, or only in appearance; “He only 
can judge it” (Luke xu. 3, 4), and therefore he only can impose 
laws upon it; it is out of the reach of human penal authority, if 
their laws be transgressed inwardly by it. Conscience is a book in 
some sort as sacred as the Scripture; no addition can be lawfully 
made to it, no subtraction from it. Men cannot diminish the duty 
of conscience, or raze out the law God hath stamped upon it. They 
cannot put a supersedeas to the writ of conscience, or stop its mouth 
with a nolt prosequi. They can make no addition by their authority 
to bind it; it is a flower in the crown of Divine sovereignty only. 

2. His sovereignty appears in a power of dispensing with his own 
laws. Itis as much a part of his dominion to dispense with his 
laws, as to enjoin them; he only hath the power of relaxing his 
own right, no creature hath power to do it; that would be to usurp 
a superiority over him, and order above God himself. Repealing or 
dispensing with the law is a branch of royal authority. It is true, 
God will never dispense with those moral laws which have an eter- 
nal reason in themselves and their own nature; as for a creature to 
fear, love, and honor God; this would be to dispense with his own 
holiness, and the righteousness of his nature, to sully the purity of 
his own dominion; it would write folly upon the first creation of 
man after the image of God, by writing mutability upon himself, in 
framing himself after the corrupted image of man; it would null 
and frustrate the excellency of the creature, wherein the image of 
God mostly shines; nay, it would be to dispense with a creature’s 
being a Creator, and make him independent upon the Sovereign of 
the world in moral obedience. But God hath a right to dispense 
with the ordinary laws of nature in the inferior creatures; he hath 
a power to alter their course by an arrest of miracles, and make 
them come short, or go beyond his ordinances established for them. 
He hath a right to make the sun stand still, or move backward; to 


392 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


bind up the womb of the earth, and bar the influences of the clouds , 
bridle in the rage of the fire, and the fury of lions; make the liquid 
waters stand hke a wall, or pull up the dam, which he hath set to 
the sea, and command it to overflow the neighboring countries: he 
can dispense with the natural laws of the whole creation, and strain 
everything beyond its ordinary pitch. Positive laws he hath revers- 
ed; as the ceremonial law given to the Jews. The very nature, in- 
deed, of that law required a repeal, and fell of course; when that 
which was intended by it was come, it was of no longer significancy ; 
as before it was a useful shadow, it would afterwards have been an 
empty one: had not.God took away this, Christianity had not, in 
all likelihood, been propagated among the Gentiles. his was the 
“partition wall between Jews and Gentiles” (Eph. xii. 14); which 
made them a distinct family from all the world, and was the occa- 
sion of the enmity of the Gentiles against the Jews. When God 
had, by bringing in what was signified by those rites, declared his 
decree for the ceasing of them; and when the Jews, fond of those 
Divine institutions, would not allow him the rightof repealing what 
he had the authority of enacting; he resolved, for the asserting his 
dominion, to bury them in the ruins of the temple and city, and 
make them forever incapable of practising the main and essential 
parts of them; for the temple being the pillar of the legal service, 
by demolishing that, God hath taken away their rights of sacrificing, 
it being peculiarly annexed to that place; they have no altar digni- 
fied with a fire from heaven to consume their sacrifices, no legal 
high-priest to offer them. God hath by his providence changed his 
own law as well as by his precept; yea, he hath gone higher, by virtue 
of his sovereignty, and changed the whole scene and methods of his 
government after the fall, from King Creator to King Redeemer. 
He hath revoked the law of works as a covenant; released the 
penalty of it from the believing sinner, by transferring it upon the 
Surety, who interposed himself by his own will and Divine designa- 
tion. He hath established another covenant upon other promises 
in a higher root, with greater privileges, and easier terms. Had 
not God had this right of sovereignty, not a man of Adam’s pos- 
terity could have been blessed; he and they must have lain groan- 
ing under the misery of the fall, which had rendered both himself 
and all in his loins unable to observe the terms of the first covenant. 
He hath, as some speak, dispensed with his own moral law in some 
cases; In commanding Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son, 
a righteous son, a son whereof he had the promise, that “in Isaac 
should his seed be called;” yet he was commanded to sacrifice him 
by the right of his absolute sovereignty as the supreme Lord of the 
lives of his creatures, from the highest angel to the lowest worm, 
whereby he bound his subjects to this law, not himself. Our lives 
are due to him when he calls for them, and they are a just forfeit 
to him, at the very moment we sin, at the very moment we come 
into the world, by reason of the venom of our nature against him, 
and the disturbance the first sin of man (whereof we are inheritors) 
gave to his glory. Had Abraham sacrificed his son of his own 
head, he had sinned, yea, in attempting it; but being authorized 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 893 


from heaven, his act was obedience to the Sovereign of the world, 
who had a power to dispense with his own law; and with this law 
he had before dispensed, in the case of Cain’s murder of Abel, as 
to the immediate punishment of it with death, which, indeed, was 
settled afterwards by his authority, but then omitted because of the 
paucity of men, and for the peopling the world; but settled after. 
wards, when there was almost, though not altogether, the like occa 
sion of omitting it for a time. 

3. His sovereignty appears in punishing the transgression of his 
law. 

(1.) This is a branch of God’s dominion as lawgiver. So was the 
vengeance God would take upon the Amalekites (Exod. xvii. 16): 
‘The Lord hath sworn, that the Lord will have war ;” the Hebrew 
is, ‘The hand upon the throne of the Lord,” as in the margin: as a 
‘lawgiver” he “saves or destroys” (James, iv. 12). He acts accord- 
ing to his own law, in a congruity to the sanction of his own pre- 
cepts; though he be an arbitrary lawgiver, appointing what laws he 
pleases, yet he is not an arbitrary judge. As he commands nothing 
but what he hath a right to command, so he punisheth none but 
whom he hath a right to punish, and with such punishment as the 
law hath denounced. All his acts of justice and inflictions of curses 
are the effects of this sovereign dominion (Ps. xxix. 10): “ He sits 
King upon the floods;” upon the deluge of waters wherewith he 
drowned the world, say some. It is a right belonging to the au- 
thority of magistrates to pull up the infectious weeds that corrupt a 
commonwealth ; it is no less the right of God, as the lawgiver and 
judge of all the earth, to subject criminals to his vengeance, after 
they have rendered themselves abominable in his eyes, and carried 
themselves unworthy subjects of so great and glorious a King. The 
first name whereby God is made known in Scripture, is Elohim (Gen. 
i, 1): “In the beginning God created the heaven and earth;” a 
name which signifies his power of judging, in the opinion of some 
critics; from him it is derived to earthly magistrates; their judg- 
ment is said, therefore, to be the “judgment of God” (Deut. i. 17). 
When Christ came, he proposed this great motive of repentance 
from the “kingdom of heaven being at hand ;” the kingdom of his 
grace, whereby to invite men; the kingdom of his justice in the 
punishment of the neglecters of it, whereby to terrify men. Punish- 
ments as well as rewards belong to royalty; it issued accordingly ; 
those that believed and repented came under his gracious sceptre, 
those that neglected and rejected it fell under his iron rod; Jerusa- 
lem was destroyed, the temple demolished, the inhabitants lost their 
lives by the edge of the sword, or lingered them out in the chains of 
a muserable captivity. This term of “judge,” which signifies a 
sovereign right to govern and punish delinquents, Abraham gives 
him, when he came to root out the people of Sodom, and make them 
the examples of his vengeance (Gen. xviii. 25). 

(2.) Punishing the transgressions of his law. This is a necessary 
branch of dominion. His sovereignty in making laws would be a 
trifle, if there were not also an authority to vindicate those laws 
from contempt and injury ; he would be a Lord only spurned at by 


394 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


rebels. Sovereignty is not preserved without justice. When the 
Psalmist speaks of the majesty of God’s kingdom, he tells us, that 
“righteousness and judgment are the habitation of his throne” (Ps. 
xevu. 1, 2). These are the engines of Divine dignity which render 
him glorious and majestic. A legislative power would be trampled 
on without executive; by this the reverential apprehensions of God 
are preserved in the world. He is known to be Lord of the world 
‘‘by the judgments which he executes” (Ps. ix. 16). When he 
seems to have lost his dominion, or given it up in the world, he re- 
covers it by punishment. When he takes some away “ with a whirl- 
wind, and in his wrath,” the natural consequence men make of it, is 
this: ‘‘Surely there is a God that judgeth the earth” (Ps. lviii. 9, 11). 
He reduceth the creature, by the lash of his judgments, that would 
not acknowledge his authority in his precepts. Those sins which 
disown his government in the heart and conscience, as pride, inward 
blasphemy, &c., he hath reserved a time hereafter to reckon for. He 
doth not presently shoot his arrows into the marrow of every delin- 
quent, but those sins which traduce his government of the world, 
and tear up the foundations of human converse, and a public respect 
to him, he reckons with particularly here, as well as hereafter, that 
the life of his sovereignty might not always faint in the world. 

(3.) This of punishing was the second discovery of his dominion 
in the world. His first act of sovereignty was the giving a law; the 
next, his appearance in the state of a judge. When his orders were 
violated, he rescues the honor of them by an execution of justice. 
He first judged the angels, punishing the evil ones for their crime: 
the first court he kept among them as a governor, was to give them 
a law; the second court he kept was as a judge trying the delin- 
quents, and adjudging the offenders to be ‘reserved in chains of ~ 
darkness” till the final execution (Jude, 6); and, at the same time 
probably, he confirmed the good ones in their obedience by grace. 
So the first discovery of his dominion to man, was the giving him a 
precept, the next was the inflicting a punishment for the breach of 
it. He summons Adam to the bar, indicts him for his crime, finds 
him guilty by his own confession, and passeth sentence on him, ac- 
cording to the rule he had before acquainted him with. 

(4.) The means whereby he punisheth shows his dominion. 
Sometimes he musters up hail and mildew; sometimes he sends 
regiments of wild beasts; so he threatens Israel (Lev. xxvi. 22). 
Sometimes he sends out a party of angels to beat up the quarters of 
men, and make a carnage among them (2 Kings, xix. 35). Some- 
times he mounts his thundering battery, and shoots forth his ammu- 
nition from the clouds, as against the Philistines (1 Sam. vii. 10). 
Sometimes he sends the slightest creatures to shame the pride and 
punish the sin of man, as “lice, frogs, locusts,” as upon the Eeypt- 
1ans (Exod. vill.—x.). 

Secondly. This dominion it manifested by God as a proprietor and 
Lord of his creatures and his own goods. And this is evident, 

1. In the choice of some persons from eternity. He hath set 
apart some from eternity, wherein he will display the invincible effi- 
cacy of his grace, and thereby infallibly bring them to the fruition 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 395 


of glory (Eph. i. 4, 5): “ According as he hath chosen us in him be- 
fore the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without 
blame before him in love, having predestinated us to the adoption 
of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure 
of his will.” Why doth he write some names in the “book of life,” 
and leave out others? Why doth he enrol some, whom he intends 
to make denizens of heaven, and refuse to put others in his register? 
The apostle'tells us, it is the pleasure of his will. You may render 
a reason for many of God’s actions, till you come to this, the top and 
foundation of all; and under what head of reason can man reduce 
this act but to that of his royal prerogative? Why doth God save 
some, and condemn others at last? because of the faith of the one, 
and unbelief of the other. Why do some men believe? because 
God hath not only given them the means of grace, but accompanied 
those means with the efficacy of his Spirit. Why did God accom- 
pany those means with the efficacy of his Spirit in some, and not in 
others ? because he had decreed by grace to prepare them for glory. 
But why did he decree, or choose some, and not others? Into what 
will you resolve this but into his sovereign pleasure? Salvation and 
condemnation at the last upshot, are acts of God as the Judge, con- 
formable to his own law of giving life to believers, and inflicting 
death upon unbelievers; for those a reason may be rendered; but 
the choice of some, and preterition of others, is an act of God as he 
1s a sovereign monarch, before any law was actually transgressed, 
because not actually given. When a prince redeems a rebel, he acts 
as a judge according to law; but when he calls some out to pardon, 
he acts as a sovereign by a prerogative above law ; into this the apos- 
tle resolves it (Rom. ix. 18, 15). When he speaks of God’s loving 
Jacob and hating Esau, and that before they had done either good or 
evil, it is, “because God will have mercy on whom he will have 
mercy, and compassion on whom he will have compassion.” Though 
the first scope of the apostle, in the beginning of the chapter, was to 
declare the reason of God’s rejecting the Jews, and calling in the 
Gentiles; had he only intended to demolish the pride of the Jews, 
and flat their opinion of merit, and aimed no higher than that pro- 
vidential act of God; he might, convincingly enough to the reason 
of men, have argued from the justice of God, provoked by the ob- 
stinacy of the Jews, and not have had recourse to his absolute will; 
but, since he asserts this latter, the strength of his argument scems to 
he thus: if God by his absolute sovereignty may resolve, and fix his 
love upon Jacob and estrange it from Hsau, or any other of his 
creatures, before they have done good or evil, and man have no 
ground to call his infinite majesty to account, may he not deal thus 
with the Jews, when their demerit would be a bar to any complaints 
of the creature against him ?g¢ If God were considered here in the 
quality of a judge, it had been fit to have considered the matter of 
fact in the criminal; but he is considered as a sovereign, rendering 
no other reason of his action but his own will ; “whom he will he 
hardens” (ver. 18). And then the apostle concludes (ver. 20), “Who 
art thou, O man, that repliest against God?” If the reason drawn 
® Amyrald, Dissert. pp. 101, 102. 


PR AARON EO OTIS 


396 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


from God's sovereignty doth not satisfy in this inquiry, no other rea- 
son can be found wherein to acquiesce: for the last condemnation 
there will be sufficient reason to clear the justice of his proceedings. 
But, in this case of election, no other reason but what is alleged, viz., 
the will of God, can be thought of, but what is liable to such knotty 
exceptions that cannot well be untied. 

(1.) It could not be any merit in the creature that might determine 
God to choose him. If the decree of election falls not under the 
merit of Christ’s passion, as the procuring cause, it cannot fall under 
the merit of any part of the corrupted mass. The decree of sending 
Christ did not precede, but followed, in order of nature, the determi- 
nation of choosing some. When men were chosen as the subjects 
for glory, Christ was chosen as the means for the bringing them to 
glory (Hph. i. 4): “ Chosen us in him, and predestinated us to the 
adoption of children by Jesus Christ.” The choice was not merel 
in Christ as the moving cause; that the apostle asserts to be “the 
good pleasure of his will ;” but in Christ, as the means of conveying 
to the chosen ones the fruits of their election. What could there be 
in any man that could invite God to this act, or be a cause of dis- 


tinction of one branch of Adam from another? Were they not all 


hewed out of the same rock, and tainted with the same corruption in 
blood? Had it been possible to invest them with a power of merit 
at the first, had not that venom, contracted in their nature, degraded 
all of power for the future? What merit was there in any but of 
wrathful punishment, since they were all considered as criminals, 
and the cursed brood of an ungrateful rebel? What dignity can 
there be in the nature of the purest part of clay, to be made a vessel 
of honor, more than in another part of clay, as pure as that which 
was formed into a vessel for mean and sordid use? What had any 
one to move his mercy more than another, since they were all chil- 
dren of wrath, and equally daubed with original guilt and filth? 
Had not all an equal proportion of it to provoke his justice? What 
merit is there in one dry bone more than another, to be inspired 
with the breath of a spiritual life? Did not all lie wallowing in their 
own filthy blood? and what could the steam and noisomeness of that 
deserve at the hands of a pure Majesty, but to be cast into a sink 
furthest from his sight? Were they not all considered in this de- 
plorable posture, with an equal proportion of poison in their nature, 
when God first took his pen, and singled out some names to write in 
the book of life? It could not be merit in any one piece of this 
abominable mass, that should stir up that resolution in God to set 
apart this person for a vessel of glory, while he permitted another to 
putrefy in his own gore. He loved Jacob, and hated Esau, though 
they were both parts of the common mass, the seed of the same loins, 
and lodged in the same womb. 

(2.) Nor could it be any foresight of works to be done in time by 
them, or of faith, that might determine God to choose them. What 
good could he foresee resulting from extreme corruption, and a 
nature alienated from him? What could he foresee of good to be 
done by them, but what he resolved in his own will, to bestow an 
ability upon them to bring forth? His choice of them was to a 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 397 


holiness, not for a holiness preceding his determination (Eph. i. 4), 
He hath chosen us, “ that we might be holy” before him; he ordain- 
ed us “to good works,” not for them (Eph. ii. 10). What is a fruit 
cannot be a moving cause of that whereof it isa fruit: grace is a 
stream from the spring of electing love; the branch is not the cause 
of the root, but the root of the branch; nor the stream the cause of 
the spring, but the spring the cause of the stream. Good works 
suppose grace, and a good and right habit in the person, as rational 
acts suppose reason. Can any man say that the rational acts man 
performs after his creation were a cause why God created him? 
This would make creation, and everything else, not so much an act 
of his will, as an act of his understanding. God foresaw no rational 
act in man, before the act of his will to give him reason; nor fore- 
sees faith in any, before the act of his will determining to give him 
faith: “Faith is the gift of God” (Eph. ii. 8). In the salvation 
which grows up from this first purpose of God, he regards not the 
works we have done, as a principal motive to settle the top-stone of 
our happiness, but his own purpose, and the grace given in Christ; 
“who hath saved us, and called us with a holy calling, not accord- 
ing to our own works, but according to his own purpose and grace, 
which was given to us in Christ, before the world began” (2 Tim. i. 
9). ‘The honor of our salvation cannot be challenged by our works, 
much less the honor of the foundation of it. It was a pure gift of | 
grace, without any respect to any spiritual, much less natural, per- 
fection. Why should the apostle mention that circumstance, when 
he speaks of God’s loving Jacob, and hating Esau, “ when neither 
of them had done good or evil” (Rom. ix. 11), if there were any fore- 
sight of men’s works as the moving cause of his love or hatred? 
God regarded not the works of either as the first cause of his choice, 
but acted by his own liberty, without respect to any of their actions 
which were to be done by them in time. If faith be the fruit of 
election, the prescience of faith doth not influence the electing act of 
God. It is called “the faith of God’s elect” (Tit. i. 1): “Paul, an 
apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith, of God’s elect ;” 2. ¢. 
settled in this office to bring the elect of God to faith. If men be 
chosen by God upon the foresight of faith, or not chosen till they 
have faith, they are not so much God’s elect, as God their elect ; 
they choose God by faith, before God chooseth them by love: it had 
not been the faith of God’s elect, 7. e. of those already chosen, but 
the faith of those that were to be chosen by God afterwards. Elec- 
tion is the cause of faith, and not faith the cause of election ; fire is 
the cause of heat, and not the heat of fire; the sun is the cause of 
the day, and not the day the cause of the rising of the sun. Men 
are not chosen because they believe, but they believe because they 
are chosen: the apostle did ill, else, to appropriate that to the elect 
which they had no more interest in, by virtue of their election, than 
the veriest reprobate in the world. Tf the foresight of what works 
might be done by his creatures was the motive of his choosing them, 
why did he not choose the devils to redemption, who could have 
done him better service, by the strength of their nature, than the 
4 Daille, in loc. 


398 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


whole mass of Adam’s posterity? Well, then, there is no possible 
way to lay the original foundation of this act of election and preteri- 
tion in anything but the absolute sovereignty of God. Justice or in- 
justice comes not into consideration in this case. There is no debt 
which justice or injustice always respects in its acting: if he had 
pleased, he might have chosen all; if he had pleased, he might have 
chosen none. It was in his supreme power to have resolved to have 
left all Adam’s posterity under the rack of his justice; if he deter- 
mined to snatch out any, it was a part of his dominion, but without 
any injury to the creatures he leaves under their own guilt. Did he 
not pass by the angels, and take man? and, by the same right of 
dominion, may he pick out some men from the common mass, and 
lay aside others to bear the punishment of their crimes. Are the 

not all his subjects? all are his criminals, and may be dealt with at 
the pleasure of their undoubted Lord and Sovereign. This is a work 
of arbitrary power; since he might have chosen none, or chosen all, 
as he saw good himself. It is at the liberty of the artificer to deter- 
mine his wood or stone to such a figure, that of a prince, or that of 
a toad; and his materials have no right to complain of him, since it 
lies wholly upon his own liberty. They must have little sense of 
their own vileness, and God’s infinite excellency above them by 
right of creation, that will contend that God hath a lesser right over 
his creatures than an artificer over his wood or stone. If it were at 
his liberty whether to redeem man, or send Christ upon such an un- 
dertaking, it is as much at his liberty, and the prerogative is to be 
allowed him, what person he will resolve to make capable of enjoy- 
ing the fruits of that redemption. One man was as fit a subject for 
mercy as another, as they all lay in-their original guilt: why would 
not Divine mercy cast its eye upon this man, as well as upon his 
neighbor? There was no cause in the creature, but all in God; it 
must be resolved into his own will: yet not into a will without wis- 
dom. God did not choose hand over head, and act by mere will, 
without reason and understanding; an Infinite Wisdom is far from 
such a kind of procedure; but the reason of God is inscrutable to us, 
unless we could understand God as well as he understands himself; 
the whole ground lies in God himself, no part of it in the creature ; 
“not in him that wills, nor in him that runs, but in God that shows 
mercy” (Rom. ix. 15, 16). Since God hath revealed no other cause 
than his will, we can resolve it into no other than his sovereign em- 
pire over all creatures. It is not without a stop to our curiosity, 
that in the same place where God asserts the absolute sovereignty 
of his mercy to Moses, he tells him he could not see his face: “I 
will be gracious to whom I will be gracious;” and he said, ‘Thou 
canst not see my face” (Exod. xxxiii. 19, 20): the rays of his infinite 
wisdom are too bright and dazzling for our weakness. The apostle 
acknowledged not only a wisdom in this proceeding, but a riches 
and treasure of wisdom; not only that, but a depth and vastness of 
those riches of wisdom; but was unable to give us an inventory and 
scheme of it (Rom. xi. 83). The secrets of his counsels are too deep 
for us to wade into; in attempting to know the reason of those acts, 
weshould find ourselves swallowed up into a bottomless gulf: though 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 399 


the understanding be above our capacity, yet the admiration of his 
authority and submission to it are not. ‘ We should cast ourselves 
down at his feet, with a full resignation of ourselves to his sovereign 
pleasure.” This is a more comely carriage in a Christian than all 
the contentious endeavors to measure God by our line. 

2. In bestowing grace where he pleases. God im conversion 
and pardon works not as a natural agent, putting forth strength to 
the utmost, which God must do, if he did renew man naturally, as 
the sun shines, and the fire burns, which always act, ad extremum 
virium, unless a cloud interpose to eclipse the one, and water to ex- 
tinguish the other. But God acts as a voluntary agent, which can 
freely exert his power when he please, and suspend it when he 
please. Though God be necessarily good, yet he is not necessitated 
to manifest all the treasures of his goodness to every subject; he 
hath power to distil his dews upon one part, and not upon another. 
If he were necessitated to express his goodness without a liberty, no 
thanks were due to him. Who thanks the sun for shining on him, 
or the fire for warming him? None; because they are necessary 
agents, and can do no other. What is the reason he did not reach 
out his hand to keep all the angels from sinking, as well as some, or 
recover them when they were sunk? What is the reason he en- 
grafts one man into the true Vine, and lets the other remain a wild 
olive? Why is not the efficacy of the Spirit always linked with the 
motions of the Spirit? Why does he not. mould the heart into a 
_gospel frame when he fills the ear with a gospel sound? Why doth 
he strike off the chains from some, and tear the veil from the heart, 
while he leaves others under their natural slavery and Kgyptian 
darkness? Why do some lie under the bands of death, while an 
other is raised to a spiritual life? What reason is there for all this 
but his absolute will? The apostle resolves the question, if the 
question be asked, why he begets one and not another? Not from 
the will of the creature, but “ his own will,” is the determination of 
one (James, i. 18). Why doth he work in one “to will and to do,” 
and not in another? Because of “his good pleasure,” is the an- 
swer of another (Phil. ii. 13). He could as well new create every 
one, as he at first created them, and make grace as universal as na- 
ture and reason, but it is not his pleasure so to do. 

(1.) It is not from want of strength in himself. The power of 
God is unquestionably able to strike off the chains of unbelief from 
all; he could surmount the obstinacy of every child of wrath, and 
inspire every son of Adam with faith as well as Adam himself. He 
wants not a virtue superior to the greatest resistance of his creature ; 
a victorious beam of light might be shot into their understandings, 
and a flood of grace might overspread their wills with one word of 
his mouth, without putting forth the utmost of his power. What 
hindrance could there be in any created spirit, which cannot be 
vasily pierced into and new moulded by the Father of spirits? Yet 
he only breathes this efficacious virtue into some, and leaves others 
under that insensibility and hardness which they love, and suffer 
them to continue in their benighting ignorance, and consume them- 

i This was Dr. Goodwin’s speech when he was in trouble. 


400 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


selves in the embraces of their dear, though deceitful Delilahs. He 
could have conquered the resistance of the J ews, as well as chased 
away the darkness and ignorance of the Gentiles. No doubt but he 
could overpower the heart of the most malicious devil, as well as 
that of the simplest and weakest man. But the breath of the Al- 
mighty Spirit is in his own power, to breathe “ where he lists” 
(John, iii. 8). It is at his liberty whether he will give to any the 
feelings of the invincible efficacy of his grace; he did not want 
strength to have kept man as firm as a rock against the temptation 
of Satan, and poured in such fortifying grace, as to have made him 
unpregnable against the powers of hell, as well as he did secure the 
standing of the angels against the sedition of their fellows: but it 
was his will to permit it to be otherwise. 

(2.) Nor is it from any prerogative in the creature. He converts 
not any for their natural perfection, because he seizeth upon the 
most ignorant; nor for their moral perfection, because he converts 
the most sinful; nor for their civil perfection, because he turns the 
most despicable. 

[1.] Not for their natural perfection of knowledge. He opened 
_the minds and hearts of the more ignorant. Were the nature of 
the Gentiles better manured than that of the Jews, or did the ta- 
pers of their understandings burn clearer? No; the one were skilled 
in the prophecies of the Messiah, and might have compared the pre- 
dictions they owned with the actions and sufferings of Christ, which 
they were spectators of. He let alone those that had expectations 
of the Messiah, and expectations about the time of Christ’s appear- 
ance, both grounded upon the oracles wherewith he had entrusted 
them. The Gentiles were unacquainted with the prophets, and 
therefore destitute of the expectations of the Messiah (ph. ii. 12): 
they were “without Christ;” without any revelation of Christ, be- 
cause “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the 
covenant of promise, having no hope, and without God in the 
world,” without any knowledge of God, or promises of Christ. The 
Jews might sooner, in a way of reason, have been wrought upon 
than the Gentiles, who were ignorant of the prophets, by whose 
writings they might have examined the truth of the apostles’ decla- 
rations. Thus are they refused that were the kindred of Christ, ac- 
cording to the flesh, and the Gentiles, that were at a greater distance~ 
from him, brought in by God; thus he catcheth not at the subtle and 
mighty devils, who had an original in spiritual nature more like to 
him, but at weak and simple man. ) 

[2.] Not for any moral perfection, because he converts the most 
sinful: the Gentiles, steeped in idolatry and superstition. He sow- 
ed more faith among the Romans than in Jerusalem ; more faith in 
a city that was the common sewer of all the idolatry of the nations 
conquered by them, than in that city which had so signally been 
owned by him, and had not practised any idolatry since the Baby- 
lonish captivity. He planted saintship at Corinth, a place notorious 
for the infamous worship of Venus, a superstition attended with the 
grossest uncleanness; at Ephesus, that presented the whole world 
with a cup of fornication in their temple of Diana; among the Colos- 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 401 


sians, votaries to Cybele in a manner of worship attended with 
beastly and lascivious ceremonies. And what character had the 
Cretians from one of their own poets, mentioned by the apostle to 
Titus, whom he had placed among them to further the progress of 
the gospel, but the vilest and most abominable? (Titus i. 12): 
“liars,” not to be credited; “evil beasts,” not to be associated with : 
“slow bellies,” fit for no service. What prerogative was there in 
the nature of such putrefaction? as much as in that of a toad to be 
elevated to the dignity of an angel. What steam from such dung- 
hills could be welcome to him, and move him to cast his eye on 
them, and sweeten them from heaven? What treasures of worth were 
here to open the treasures of his grace! Were such filthy snuffs fit 
of themselves to be kindled by, and become a lodging for, a gospel 
beam? What invitements could he have from lying, beastliness, 
gluttony, but only from his own sovereignty? _ By this he plucked 
firebrands out of the fire, while he left straighter and more comely 
sticks to consume to ashes. 

[3.] Not for any civil perfection, because he turns the most. des- 
picable. He elevates not nature to grace upon the account of wealth, 
honor, or any civil station in the world: he dispenseth not ordi- 
narily those treasures to those that the mistaken world foolishly ad 
mire and dote upon (1 Cor. i. 26); “Not many mighty, not many 
noble:” a purple robe is not usually decked with this jewel; he takes 
more of mouldy clay than refined dust to cast into his image, and 
lodges his treasures more in the earthly vessels than in the world’s 
golden ones; he gives out his richest doles to those that are the 
scorn and reproach of the world. Should he impart his grace most 
to those that abound in wealth or honor, it had been some founda 
tion for a conception that he had been moved by those vulgarly es 
teemed excellencies to indulge them more than others. But such a 
conceit languisheth when we behold the subjects of his grace as void 
originally of any allurements, as they are full of provocations. 
Hereby he declares himself free from all created engagements, and 
that he is not led by any external motives in the object. 

[4.] It is not from any obligation which lies upon him. He is in- 
debted to none: disobliged by all. No man deserves from him any 
act of grace, but every man deserves what. the most deplorable are 
left to suffer. He is obliged by the children of wrath to nothing else 
but showers of wrath; owes no more a debt to fallen man, than to 
fallen devils, to restore them to their first station by a superlative 
grace. How was he more bound to restore them, than he was to 
preserve them; to catch them after they fell, than to put a bar in 
the way of their falling? God, as a sovereign, gave laws to men, 
and a strength sufficient to keep those laws. What. obligation is 
there upon God to repair that strength man wilfully lost, and extract 
him out of that condition into which he voluntarily plunged him- 
self? What if man sinned by temptation, which is a reason alleged 
by some, might not many of the devils do so too? Though there 
was a first of them that sinned without a temptation, yet many of 
them might be seduced into rebellion by the ringleader. Upon that 
account he is no more bound to give grace to all men, than to devils. 

VOL. 11.—26 


402 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


If he promised life upon obedience, he threatened death upon trans- 
gression. By man’s disobedience God is quit of his promise, and 
owes nothing but punishment upon the violation of his law. Indeed 
man may pretend to a claim of sufficient strength from him by crea- 
tion, as God is the author of nature, and he had it; but since he hath 
extinguished it by his sin, he cannot in the least pretend any obliga- 
tion on God for a new strength. Ifit bea ‘“peradventure” whether 
he will “ give repentance,” as itis 2 Tim. i. 25, there is no tie in 
the case; a tie would put it beyond a peradventure with a God that 
never forfeited his obligation. No husbandman thinks himself 
obliged to bestow cost and pains, manure and tillage, upon one field 
more than another; though the nature of the ground may require 
more, yet he is at his hberty whether he will expend more upon one 
than another.« He may let it lie fallow as long as he please. 
God is less obliged to till and prune his creatures, than man is obliged 
to his field or trees. If a king proclaim a pardon to a company of 
rebels, upon the condition of each of them paying such a sum of 
money; their estates before were capable of satisfying the condition, 
but their rebellion hath reduced them to an indigent condition; the 
proclamation itself is an act of grace, the condition required is not 
impossible in itself: the prince, out of a tenderness to some, sends 
them that sum of money, he hath by his proclamation obliged them 
to pay, and thereby enabled them to answer the condition he re- 
quires; the first he doth by a sovereign authority, the second he 
doth by a sovereign bounty. He was obliged to neither of them; 
punishment was a debt due to all of them; if he would remit it upon 
condition, he did relax his sovereign right; and if he would by his 
largess make any of them capable to fulfil the condition, by sending 
them presently a sufficient sum to pay the fine, he acted as proprie- 
tor of his own goods, to dispose of them in such a quantity to those 
to whom he was not obliged to bestow a mite. 

[5.] It must therefore be an act of his mere sovereignty. This 
can only sit arbitrator in every gracious act. Why did he give 
grace to Abel and not to Cain, since they both lay in the same 
womb, and equally derived from their parents a taint in their na- 
ture; but that he would show a standing example of his sovereignty 
to the future ages of the world in the first posterity of man? Why 
did he give grace to Abraham, and separate him from his idolatrous 
kindred, to dignify him to be the root of the Messiah? Why did 
he confine his promise to Isaac, and not extend it to Ishmael, the 
seed of the same Abraham by Hagar, or to the children he had by 
Keturah after Sarah’s death? What reason can be alleged for this but 
his sovereign will? Why did he not give the fallen angels a moment 
of repentance after their sin, but condemned them to irrevocable 
pains? Is it not as free for him to give grace to whom he please, as 
create what worlds he please; to form this corrupted clay into his 
own image, as to take such a parcel of dust from all the rest of the 
creation whereof to compact Adam’s body? Hath he not as much 
jurisdiction over the simful mass of his creatures in a new creation, 
as he had over the chaos in the old? And what reason can be ren- 

k Claude, sur la Parabole des Noces, p. 29. 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 403 


dered, of his advancing this part of matter to the nobler dignity of a 
star, and leaving that other part to make up the dark body of the 
earth ; to compact one part into a glorious sun, and another part 
into a hard rock, but his royal prerogative? What is the reason a 
prince subjects one malefactor to punishment, and lifts wp another to 
a place of trust and profit? that Pharaoh honored the butler with 
an attendance on his person, and remitted the baker to the hands of the 
executioner? Itwas hispleasure. And is not as greatright dueto God, 
as is allowed to the worms of the earth? What is the reason he 
hardens a Pharaoh, by a denying him that grace which should mol- 
lify him, and allows it to another? Itis because he will. ‘“ Whom 
he will he hardens” (Rom. ix. 18). Hath not man the liberty to pull 
up the sluice, and let the water run into what part of the ground he 
pleases? What is the reason some have not a heart to understand 
the beauty of his ways? Because the Lord doth not give it them 
(Deut. xxix. 4). Why doth he not give all his converts an equal 
measure of his sanctifying grace? some have mites and some have 
treasures. Why doth he give his grace to some sooner, to some 
later ? some are inspired in their infancy, others not till a full age, 
and after ; some not till they have fallen into some gross sin, as Paul; 
some betimes, that they may do him service: others later, as the 
thief upon the cross, and presently snatcheth them out of the world ? 
Some are weaker, some stronger in nature, some more beautiful and 
lovely, others more uncomely and sluggish. It is so in supernatu- 
rals. What reason is there for this, but his own will? This is in- 
stead of all that can be assigned on the part of God. He is the free 
disposer of his own goods, and as a Father may give a greater portion 
to one child than to another. And what reason of complaint is there 
against God? may not a toad complain that God did not make it 
aman, and give it a portion of reason? or a fly complain that God 
did not make it an angel, and give it a garment of light; had they 
but any spark of understanding; as well as man complain that God 
did not give him grace as well as another? Unless he sincerely de- 
sired it, and then was denied it, he might complain of God, though 
not as a sovereign, yet as a promiser of grace to them that ask it. 
God doth not render his sovereignty formidable; he shuts not up 
his throne of grace from any that seek him; he invites man; his 
arms are open, and the sceptre stretched out; and no man continues 
under the arrest of his lusts, but he that is unwilling to be other- 
wise, and such a one hath no reason to complain of God. 

3. His sovereignty is manifest in disposing the means of grace to 
some, not to all. He hath caused the sun to shine bright in one 
place, while he hath left others benighted and deluded by the devil’s 
oracles. Why do the evangelical dews fall in this or that place, and 
not in another? Why was the gospel published in Rome so soon, 
and notin Tartary? Why hath it been extinguished in some places, 
as soon almost as it had been kindled in them? Why hath one 
place been honored with the beams of it in one age, and been 
covered with darkness the next? One country hath been made a 
sphere for this star, that directs to Christ, to move in; and after- 
wards it hath been taken away, and placed in another; sometimes 


404. CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


more Clearly it hath shone, sometimes more darkly, in the same 
place; whatis the reason of this? It is true something of it may be 
referred to the justice of God, but much more to the sovereignty of 
God. That the gospel is published later, and not sooner, the apostle 
tell us is “according to the commandment of the everlasting God” 
(Rom. xvi. 26). 

(1.) The means of grace, after the families from Adam became dis- 
tinct, were never granted to all the world. After that fatal breach in 
Adam’s family by the death of Abel, and Cain’s separation, we read 
not of the means of grace continued among Cain’s posterity ; it seems 
to be continued in Adam’s sole family, and not published in societies 
till the time of Seth. “Then began men to call upon the name of 
the Lord” (Gen. iv. 26). It was continued in that family till the 
deluge, which was 1523 years after the creation, according to some, 
or 1656 years, according to others. After that, when the world de- 
generated, it was communicated to Abraham, and settled in the pos- 
terity that descended from Jacob ; though he left not the world with- 
out a witness of himself, and some sprinklings of revelations in other 
parts, as appears by the Book of Job, and the discourses of his 
‘ friends. 

(2.) The Jews had this privilege granted them above other nations, 
to have a clearer revelation of God. God separated them from all 
the world to honor them with the depositum of his oracles (Rom. iii. 
2): “To them were committed the oracles of God.” In which re- 
gard all other nations are said to be “ without God” (Eph. ii. 12), as 
being destitute of so great a privilege. The Spirit blew in Canaan 
when the lands about it felt not the saving breath of it. ‘“ He hath 
not dealt so with any nation; and as for his judgments, they have 
not known them” (Ps, cxlvii. 20). The rest had no warnings from 
the prophets, no dictates from heaven, but what they had by the light 
of nature, the view of the works of creation, and the administration 
of Providence, and what remained among them of some ancient tradi- 
tions derived from Noah, which, in tract of time, were much defaced. 
We read but of one Jonah sent to Nineveh, but frequent alarms to 
the Israelites by a multitude of prophets commissioned by God. It 
is true, the door of the Jewish church was open to what proselytes 
would enter themselves, and embrace their religion and worship ; 
but there was no public proclamation made in the world; only God, 
by his miracles in their deliverance from Egypt (which could not but 
be famous among all the neighbor nations), declared them to be 
a people favored by heaven: but the tradition from Adam and Noah 
was not publicly revived by God in other parts, and raised from that 
grave of forgetfulness wherein it had lain so long buried. Was there 
any reason in them for this indulgence? God might have been as 
liberal to any other nation, yea, to all the nations in the world, if it 
had been his sovereign pleasure: any other people were as fit. to be 
entrusted with his oracles, and be subjects for his worship, as that 
people; yet all other nations, till the rejection of the Jews, because 
of their rejection of Christ, were strangers from the covenant of 
promise. 'T'hese people were part of the common mass of the world: 
they had no prerogative in nature above Adam’s posterity. Were 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 405 


they the extract of an innocent part of his loins, and all the other 
nations drained out of his putrefaction? Had the blood of Abraham, 
from whom they were more immediately descended, any more pre- 
cious tincture than the rest of mankind? They, as well as other 
nations, were made of “one blood” (Acts xvii. 26); and that cor- 
rupted both in the spring and in the rivulets. Were they better than 
other nations, when God first drew them out of their slavery? We 
have Joshua’s authority for it, that they had complied with the Keypt- 
ian idolatry, “and served other gods,” in that place of their servi- 
tude (Josh. xxiv. 14). Had they had an abhorrency of the supersti- 
tion of Egypt, while they remained there, they could not so soon 
have erected a golden calf for worship, in imitation of the Egyptian 
idols. All the rest of mankind had as inviting reasons to present 
God with, as those people had. God might have granted the same 
privilege to all the world, as well as to them, or denied it them, and 
endowed all the rest of the world with his statutes: but the enrich- 
ing such a small company of people with his Divine showers, and 
leaving the rest of the world as a barren wilderness in spirituals, can 
be placed upon no other account originally than that of his unaccount- 
able sovereignty, of his love to them: there was nothing in them to 
merit such high titles from God as his first-born, his peculiar treas- 
ure, the apple of his eye. He disclaims any righteousness in them, 
and speaks a word sufficient to damp such thoughts in them, by 
charging them with their wickedness, while he “ loaded them with 
his benefits” (Deut. ix. 4, 6). The Lord “ gives thee not” this land 
for “ thy righteousness ;” for thou art a stiffnecked people. It was 
an act of God’s free pleasure to ‘choose them to be a people to him- 
self” (Deut. vi. 6). 

(3.) God afterwards rejected the Jews, gave them up to the hard- 
ness of their hearts, and spread the gospel among the Gentiles. He 
hath cast off the children of the kingdom, those that had been en- 
rolled for his subjects for many ages, who seemed, by their descent 
from Abraham, to have a right to the privileges of Abraham; and 
called men from the east and from the west, from the darkest cor- 
ners in the world, to ‘sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in 
the kingdom of heaven,” ¢. e. to partake with them of the promises 
of the gospel (Matt. viii. 11). The people that were accounted ac- 
cursed by the Jews enjoy the means of grace, which have been hid 
from those that were once dignified this 1600 years; that they have 
neither ephod, nor teraphim, nor sacrifice, nor any true worship of 
God among them (Hos. iii. 4). Why he should not give them grace 
to acknowledge and own the person of the Messiah, to whom he had 
made the promises of him for so many successive ages, but let their 
““heart be fat,” and “ their ears heavy” (Isa. vi. 10) ?—-why the gos- 
pel at length, after the resurrection of Christ, should be presented to 
the Gentiles, not by chance, but pursuant to the resolution and pre- 
diction of God, declared by the prophets that it should be so in time? 
—why he should let so many hundreds of years pass over, after the 
world was peopled, and let the nations all that while soak in their 
idolatrous customs ?—why he should not call the Gentiles without 
rejecting the Jews, and bind them both up together in the bundle of 


406 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


life ?—-why he should acquaint some people with it a little after the 
publishing it in Jerusalem, by the descent of the Spirit, and others 
not a long time after ?—some in the first ages of Christianity enjoyed 
it; others have it not, as those in America, till the last age of the 
world ;—can be referred to nothing but his sovereign pleasure. W hat 
merit can be discovered in the Gentiles? There is something of jus- 
tice in the case of the Jews’ rejection, nothing but sovereignty in the 
Gentiles’ reception into the church. Ifthe Jews were bad, the Gen- 
tiles were in some sort worse: the Jews owned the one true God, 
without mixture of idols, though they owned not the Messiah in his 
appearance, which they did in a promise; but the Gentiles owned 
neither the one nor the other. Some tell us, it was for the merit of 
some of their ancestors. How comes the means of grace, then, to 
be taken from the Jew, who had (if any people ever had) meritori- 
ous ancestors for a plea? If the merit of some of their former pro- 
genitors were the cause, what was the reason the debt due to their 
merit was not paid to their immediate progeny, or to themselves, but 
to a posterity so distant from them, and so abominably depraved as 
the Gentile world was at the day of the gospel-sun striking into their 
horizon? What merit might be in their ancestors (if any could be 
supposed in the most refined rubbish), it was so little for themselves, 
that no oil could be spared out of their lamps for others. What 
merit their ancestors might have, might be forfeited by the succeed- 
ing generations. It is ordinarily seen, that what honor a father de- 
serves in a state for public service, may be lost by the son, forfeited 
by treason, and himself attainted. Or was it out of a foresight that 
the Gentiles would embrace it, and the Jews reject it,; that the Gen- 
tiles would embrace it in one place, and not in another? How did 
God foresee it, but in his own grace, which he was resolved to dis- 
play in one, not in another? It must be then still resolved into his 
sovereign pleasure. Or did he foresee it in their wills and nature? 
What, were they not all one common dross? Was any part of Adam, 
by nature, better than another? How did God foresee that which 
was not, nor could be, without his pleasure to give ability, and grace 
to receive? Well, then, what reason but the sovereign pleasure of 
God can be alleged, why Christ forbade the apostles, at their first 
- commission, to preach to the Gentiles (Matt. x. 15), but, at the sec- 
ond and standing commission, orders them to preach to “every crea- 
ture?” Why did he put a demur to the resolutions of Paul and 
Timothy, to impart light to Bithynia, or order them to go into Mace- 
donia? Was that country more worthy upon whom lay a great 
part of the blood of the world shed in Alexander's time (Acts xvi. 
6, 7,9, 10)? Why should Corazin and Bethsaida enjoy those means 
that were not granted to the Tyrians and Sidonians, who might prob- 
ably have sooner reached out their arms to welcome it (Matt. xi. 21)? 
Why should God send the gospel into our island, and cause it to 
flourish so long here, and not send it, or continue it, in the furthest. 
eastern parts of the world? Why should the very profession of 
Christianity possess so small a compass of ground in the world, but 
five parts in thirty, the Mahometans holding six parts, and the other 
nineteen overgrown with Paganism, where either the gospel was 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 407 


never planted, or else since rooted up? To whom will you refer 
this, but to the same cause our Saviour doth the revelation of the 
gospel to babes, and not to the wise—even to his Father? ‘For so 
it seemed good in thy sight” (Matt. xi. 25, 26); “ For so was thy 

ood pleasure before thee” (as im the original) ; it is at his pleasure 
whether he will give any a clear revelation of his gospel, or leave 
them only to the light of nature. He could have kept up the first 
beam of the gospel in the promise in all nations among the aposta- 
sies of Adam’s posterity, or renewed it in all nations when it began 
to be darkened, as well as he first published it to Adam after his fall ; 
but it was his sovereign pleasure to permit it to be obscured in one 
place, and to keep it hghted in another. 

4, His sovereignty is manifest in the various influences of the 
means of grace. He saith to these waters of the sanctuary, as to the 
floods of the sea, “ Hitherto you shall go, and no further.” Some- 
times they wash away the filth of the flesh and outward man, but 
not that of the spirit; the gospel spiritualizeth some, and only 
moralizeth others; some are by the power of it struck down to con- 
viction, but not raised up to conversion ; some have only the gleams 
of it in their consciences, and others more powerful flashes; some 
remain in their thick darkness under the beaming of the gospel every 
day in their face, and after a long insensibleness are roused by its 
light and warmth ; sometimes there is such a powerful breath in it, 
that it levels the haughty imaginations of men, and lays them at its 
feet that before strutted against it in the pride of their heart. The 
foundation of this is not in the gospel itself, which is always the 
same, nor in the ordinances, which are channels as sound at one 
time as at another, but Divine sovereignty that spirits them as he 
pleaseth, and ‘“ blows when and where it lists.” It has sometimes 
conquered its thousands (Acts, ii. 41); at another time scarce its tens; 
sometimes the harvest hath been great, when the laborers have been 
but few ; at another time it hath been small, when the laborers have 
been many ; sometimes whole sheaves; at another time scarce glean- 
ings. The evangelical net hath been sometimes full at a cast, and at 
every cast; at another time many have labored all night, and da 
too, and catched nothing (Acts, ii. 47): ‘‘The Lord added to the 
church daily.” The gospel chariot doth not always return with cap- 
tives chained to the sides of it, but sometimes blurred and reproach- 
ed, wearing the marks of hell’s spite, instead of imprinting the 
marks of its own beauty. In Corinth it triumphed over many 
people (Acts, xviii. 10); m Athens it is mocked, and gathers but a 
few clusters (Acts, xvi. 32, 84). God keeps the key of the heart, 
as well as of the womb. The apostles had a power of publishing 
the gospel, and working miracles, but under the Divine conduct; it 
was an instrumentality durante bene placito, and as God saw it con- 
venient. Miracles were not upon every occasion allowed to them 
to be wrought, nor success upon every administration granted to 
them; God sometimes lent them the key, but to take out no more 
treasure than was allotted to them. There is a variety in the time of 
gospel operation ; some rise out of their graves of sin, and beds of 
sluggishness, at the first appearance of this sun; others lie snorting 


408 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


longer. Why doth not God spirit it at one season as well as at 
another, but set his distinct periods of time, but because he will show 
his absolute freedom? And do we not sometimes experiment that 
after the most solemn preparations of the heart, we are frustrated of 
those incomes we expected? Perhaps it was because we thought 
Divine returns were due to our preparations, and God stops up the 
channel, and we return drier than we came, that God may confute 
our jalse opinion, and preserve the honor of his own sovereignty. 
Sometimes we leap with John Baptist in the womb at the @ppear- 
ance of Christ; sometimes we lie upon a lazy bed when he knocks 
from heaven; sometimes the fleece is dry, and sometimes wet, and 
God withholds to drop down his dew of the morning upon it. ‘Ihe 
dews of his word, as well as the droppings of the clouds, belong to 
his royalty ; light will not shine into the heart, though it shine round 
about us, without the sovereign order of that God “ who command- 
ed light to shine out of the darkness” of the chaos (2 Cor. iv. 6). 
And is it not seen also in regard of the refreshing influences of the 
word? sometimes the strongest arguments, and clearest promises, 
prevail nothing towards the quelling black and despairitig imagi- 
nations ; when, afterwards, we have found them frighted away 
by an unexpected word, that seemed to have less virtue in it itself 
than any that passed in vain before it. The reasonings of wisdom 
have dropped down like arrows against a brazen wall, when the 
speech of a weaker person hath found an efficacy. It is God by his 
sovereignty spirits one word and not another; sometimes a secret 
word comes in, which was not thought of before, as dropped from 
heaven, and gives a refreshing, when emptiness was found in all the 
rest. One word from the lips of a sovereign prince is a greater cordial 
than all the harangues of subjects without it; what is the reason of 
this variety, but that God would increase the proofs of his own sover- 
eignty ? that as it was a part of his dominion to create the beauty 
of a world, so it is no less to create the peace as well as the grace of 
the heart (Isa. lvii. 19): “I create the fruit of tle lips, peace.” Let 
us learn from hence to have adoring thoughts of, not murmuring 
fancies against, the sovereignty of God; to acknowledge it with 
thankfulness in what we have; to implore it with a holy submission 
in what we want. To own God as a sovereign in a way of depend- 
ence, is the way to be owned by him as subjects in a way of favor. 
5. His sovereignty is manifested in giving a greater measure of 
knowledge to some than to others. What parts, gifts, excellency of 
nature, any have above others, are God’s donative; “ He gives wis- 
dom to the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding” 
(Dan. u. 21); wisdom, the habit, and knowledge, the right use of it, 
in discerning the right nature of objects, and the fitness of means 
conducing to the end; all is but a beam of Divine light; and the 
different degrees of knowledge in one man above another, are the 
effects of his sovereign pleasure. He enlightens not the minds of 
all men to know every part of his will; one “ eats with a doubtful 
conscience,” another in “ faith,” without any staggering (Rom. xiv. 
2). Peter had a desire to keep up circumcision, not fully understand- 
ing the mind of God in the abolition of the Jewish ceremonies ; 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 409 


while Paul was clear in the truth of that doctrine. A thought comes 
into our mind that, like a sunbeam, makes a Scripture truth visible 
in a moment, which before we were poring upon without any suc- 
cess; this is from his pleasure. One in the primitive times had the 
gift of knowledge, another of wisdom, one the gift of prophecy, 
another of tongues, one the gift of healing, another that of discern- 
ing spirits; why this gift to one man, and not to another? Why 
such a distribution in several subjects? Because it is his sovereign 
pleasure. “I'he Spirit divides to every man severally as he will” 
(1 Cor. xu. 11). Why doth he give Bezaleel and Aholiab the gift 
of engraving, and making curious works for the tabernacle (Exod. 
Xxx1. 3), and ndt others? Why doth he bestow the treasures of 
evangelical knowledge upon the meanest of earthen vessels, the poor 
Galileans, and neglect the Pharisees, stored with the knowledge both 
of naturals and morals? Why did he give to some, and not to 
others, “to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven ?” (Matt. 
xii. 11.) The reason is implied in the words, “ Because it was the 
mystery of his kingdom,” and therefore was the act of his sover- 
eignty. How would it be a kingdom and monarchy if the govern- 
or of it were bound to do what he did? It is to be resolved only 
into the sovereign right of propriety of his own goods, that he fur- 
nisheth babes with a stock of knowledge, and leaves the wise and 
prudent empty of it (Matt. xi. 26): “Even so, Father: for so it 
seemed good in thy sight.” Why did he not reveal his mind to Eh, 
a grown man, and in the highest office in the Jewish church, but 
open it to Samuel, a stripling? why did the Lord go from the one to 
the other? Because his motion depends upon his own will. Some 
are of so dull a constitution, that they are incapable of any impres- 
sion, like rocks too hard for a stamp; others like water; you may 
stamp what you please, but it vanisheth as soon as the seal is re- 
moved. Itis God forms men as he pleaseth: some have parts to 
govern a kingdom, others scarce brains to conduct their own affairs ; 
one is fit to rule men, and another scarce fit to keep swine; some 
have capacious souls in crazy and deformed bodies, others contracted 
spirits and heavier minds in a richer and more beautiful case. Why 
are not all stones alike? some have a more sparkling light, as gems, 
more orient than pebbles ;—some are stars of first, and others of a 
less magnitude ; others as mean as glow-worms, a slimy lustre :—it 
is because he is the sovereign Disposer of what belongs to him; and 
gives here, as well as at the resurrection, to one ‘a glory of the sun;” 
to another that of the ““moon;” and to a third a less, resembling 
that of a “star” (1 Cor. xv. 40). And this God may do by the 
same right of dominion, as he exercised when he endowed some 
kinds of creatures with a greater perfection than others in their na- 
ture. Why may he not as well garnish one man with a greater 
proportion of gifts, as make a man differ in excellency from the na- 
ture of a beast? or frame angels to a more purely spiritual nature 
than aman? or make one angel a cherubim or seraphim, with a 
greater measure of light than another? Though the foundation of 
this is his dominion, yet his wisdom is not uninterested in his sover- 
eign disposal; he garnisheth those with a greater ability whom he 


410 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


intends for greater service, than those that he intends for less, or 
none at all; as an artificer bestows more labor, and carves a more 
excellent figure upon those stones that he designs for a more honor- 
able place in the building. But though the intending this or that 
man for service be the motive of laying in a greater provision in 
him than in others, yet still it is to be referred to his sovereignty, 
since that first act of culling him out for such an end was the fruit 
solely of his sovereign pleasure: as when he resolved to make a crea- 
ture actively to glorify him, in wisdom he must give him reason; yet 
the making such a creature was an act of his absolute dominion. 

6. His sovereignty is manifest in the calling some to a more spe- 
cial service in their generation. God settles some in immediate 
offices of his service, and perpetuates them in those offices, with a 
neglect of others, who seem to have a greater pretence to them. 
Moses was a great sufferer for Israel, the solicitor for them in Kgypt, 
and the conductor of them from Egypt to Canaan; yet he was not 
chosen to the high priesthood, but that was an office settled upon 
Aaron, and his posterity after him, in a lineal descent; Moses was 
only pitched upon for the present rescue of the captived Israelites, 
and to be the instrument of Divine miracles; but notwithstanding 
all the success he had in his conduct, his faithfulness in his employ- 
ment, and the transcendent familiarity he had with the great Ruler 
of the world, his posterity were left in the common level of the tribe 
of Levi, without any special mark of dignity upon them above the 
rest for all the services of that great man. Why Moses for a tem- 
porary magistrate, Aaron for a perpetual priesthood, above all the 
rest of the Israelites? hath little reason but the absolute pleasure of 
God, who distributes his employments as he pleaseth; and as a 
master orders his servant to do the noblest work, and another to 
labor in baser offices, according to his pleasure. Why doth he call 
out David, a shepherd, to sway the Jewish sceptre, above the rest 
of the brothers, that had a fairer appearance, and had been bred in 
arms, and inured to the toils and watchings of a camp? Wh 
should Mary be the mother of Christ, and not some other of the 
same family of David, of a more splendid birth, and a nobler educa- 
tion? Though some other reasons may be rendered, yet that which 
affords the greatest acquiescence, is the sovereign will of God. Why 
did Christ choose out of the meanest of the people the twelve 
apostles, to be heralds of his grace in Judea, and other parts of the 
world; and afterwards select Paul before Gamaliel, his instructor, 
and others of the Jews, as learned as himself, and advance him to be 
the most eminent apostle, above the heads of those who had min- 
istered to Christin the days of his flesh? Why should he preserve 
eleven of those he first called to propagate and enlarge his kingdom, 
and leave the other to the employment of shedding his blood? 
Why, in the times of our reformation, he should choose a Luther 
out of a monastery, and leave others in their superstitious nastiness, 
to perish in the traditions of their fathers? Why set up Calvin, as 
a bulwark of the gospel, and let others as learned as himself 
wallow in the sink of popery? It is his pleasure to do so. The 
potter hath power to separate this part of the clay to form a vessel 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 411 


for a more public use, and another part of the clay to form a 
vessel for a more private one. God takes the meanest clay to 
form the most excellent and honorable vessels in his house. As 
he formed man, that was to govern the creatures of the same cla 
and earth whereof the beasts were formed, and not of that nobler 
element of water, which gave birth to the fish and birds: so he 
forms some, that are to do him the greatest service, of the meanest 
materials, to manifest the absolute right of his dominion. 

7. His sovereignty is manifest in the bestowing much wealth and 
honor upon some, and not vouchsafing it to the more industrious 
labors and attempts of others. Some are abased, and others are 
elevated ; some are enriched, and others impoverished ; some scarce 
feel any cross, and others scarce feel any comfort in their whole 
lives; some sweat and toil, and what they labor for runs out of 
their reach ; others sit still, and what they wish for falls into their 
lap. One of the same clay hath a diadem to beautify his head, and 
another wants a covering to protect him from the weather. One 
hath a stately palace to lodge in, and another is scarce master of a 
cottage where to lay his head. A sceptre is put into one man’s 
hand, and a spade into another’s; a rich purple garnisheth one 
man’s body, while another wraps himself in dunghill rags. The 
poverty of some, and the wealth of others, is an effect of the Divine 
sovereignty, whence God is said to be the Maker of the “ poor as 
well as the rich” (Prov. xxi. 2), not only of their persons, but of 
their conditions. ‘The earth, and the fulness thereof, is his propriety ; 
and he hath as much a right as Joseph had to bestow changes of 
raiment upon what Benjamins he please. There is an election to a 
greater degree of worldly felicity, as there is an election of some to 
a greater degree of supernatural grace and glory: as he makes it 
‘rain upon one city, and not upon another” (Amos iv. 7), so he 
causeth prosperity to distil upon the head of one and not upon 
another; crowning some with earthly blessings, while he crosseth 
others with continual afflictions: for he speaks of himself as a great 
proprietor of the corn that nourisheth us, and the wine that cheers 
us, and the wood that warm us (Hos. ii. 8, 9): “I will take away,” 
not your corn and wine, but ‘“‘my corn, my wine, my wool.” His 
right to dispose of the goods of every particular person is unques- 
tionable. He can take away from one, and pass over the propriety 
to another. ‘Thus he devolved the right of the Egyptian jewels to 
the Israelites, and bestowed upon the captives what before he had 
vouchsafed to the oppressors; as every sovereign state demands the 
goods of their subjects for the public advantage in a case of exi- 
gency, though none of that wealth was gained by any public office, 
but by their private industry, and gained in a country not subject 
to the dominion of those that require a portion of them. By this 
right he changes strangely the scene of the world; sometimes those 
that are high are reduced to a mean and ignominious condition, 
those that are mean are advanced to a state of plenty and glory. 
The counter, which in accounting signifies now but a penny, is 
presently raised up to signify a pound. The proud ladies of Israel, 
instead of a girdle of curious needlework, are brought to make use 


412 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of a cord; as the vulgar translates rent, a rag, or list of cloth (Isa. 
iu. 24), and sackcloth for a stomacher instead of silk. This is the 
sovereign act of God, as he is Lord of the world (Ps. Ixxy. 6, 7): 
“ Promotion cometh neither from the east, nor from the west, nor from 
the south, hut God is the Judge: he putteth down one, and setteth 
up another.” He doth no wrong to any man, if he lets him languish 
out his days in poverty and disgrace: if he gives or takes away, 
he meddles with nothing but what is his own more than ours: if he 
did dispense his benefits equally to all, men would soon think it 
their due. ‘The inequality and changes preserve the notion of God’s 
sovereignty, and correct our natural unmindfulness of it. If there 
were no changes, God would not be feared as the ‘ King of all the 
earth” (Ps. lv. 19): to this might also be referred his investing some 
countries with greater riches in their bowels, and on the surface; 
the disposing some of the fruitful and pleasant regions of Canaan 
or Italy, while he settles others in the icy and barren parts of the 
northern climates. 

8. His sovereignty is manifest in the times and seasons of dispens- 
ing his goods. He is Lord of the times when, as well as of 
‘the goods which, he doth dispose of to any person; these “ the 
Father hath put in his own power” (Actsi. 7). As it was his sov- 
ereign pleasure to restore the kingdom to Israel, so he would pitch 
upon the time when to do it, and would not have his right invaded, 
so much as by a question out of curiosity. This disposing of op- 
portunities, in many things, can be referred to nothing else but his 
sovereign pleasure. Why should Christ come at the twilight and 
evening of the world? at the fulness, and not at the beginning, of 
time? Why should he be from the infancy of the world so long 
wrapt up in a promise, and not appear in the flesh till the last 
times and gray hairs of the world, when so many persons, in all 
nations, had been hurried out of the world without any notice of 
such a Redeemer? What was this but his sovereign will? Why 
the Gentiles should be left so long in the devil’s chains, wallowing 
in the sink of their abominable superstitions, since God had declared 
his intention by the prophets to call multitudes of them, and reject 
the Jews;—why he should defer it so long, can be referred to 
nothing but the same cause. What is the reason the veil continues 
so long upon the heart of the Jews, that is promised, one time or 
other, to be taken off? Why doth God delay the accomplishment 
of those glorious predictions of the happiness and interest of that 
people? Is it because of the sin of their ancestors,—a reason that 
cannot bear much weight? If we cast it upon that account, their 
conversion can never be expected, can never be effected ; if for the 
sins of their ancestors, is it not also for their own sins? Do their 
sins grow less in number, or less venomous, or provoking in quality, 
by this delay? Is not their blasphemy of Christ as malicious, their 
hatred of him as strong and rooted, as ever? Do they not as much 
approve of the bloody act of their ancestors, since so many ages are 
past, as their ancestors did applaud it at the time of the execution? 
Have they not the same disposition and will, discovered sufficiently 
by the scorn of Christ, and of those that profess his name, to act the 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 413 


same thing over again, were Christ now in the same state in the 
world, and they invested with the same power of government? If 
their conversion were deferred one age after the death of Christ for 
the sins of their preceding ancestors, is it to be expected now ; since 
the present generation of the Jews in all countries have the sins of 
those remote, the succeeding, and their more immediate ancestors, 
lying upon them? ‘This, therefore, cannot be the reason; but as it 
was the sovereign pleasure of God to foretell his intention to over- 
come the stoutness of their hearts, so it is his sovereign pleasure 
that it shall not be performed till the “fulness of the Gentiles be 
come in” (Rom. xi. 25). As he is the Lord of his own grace, so he 
is the Lord of the time when to dispense it. Why did God create 
the world in six days, which he could have erected and beautified 
inamoment? Because it was his pleasure so todo. Why did he 
frame the world when he did, and not many ages before? Because 
he is Master of his own work. Why did he not resolve to brin 
Israel to the fruition of Canaan till after four hundred years? Why 
did he draw out their deliverance to so long time after he began to 
attempt it? Why such a multitude of plagues upon Pharaoh to 
work it, when he could have cut short the work by one mortal blow 
upon the tyrant and his accomplices? It was his sovereign plea- 
sure to act.so, though not without other reasons intelligible enough 
by looking into the story. Why doth he not bring man to a perfec- 
tion of stature in a moment after his birth, but let him continue in 
a tedious infancy, in a semblance to beasts, for the want of an exer- 
cise of reason? Why doth he not bring this or that man, whom. 
he intends for service, to a fitness in an instant, but by long tracts of 
study, and through many meanders and labyrinths? Why doth he 
transplant a hopeful person in his youth to the pleasures of another 
world, and let another, of an eminent holiness, continue in the 
misery of this, and wade through many floods of afflictions? What 
can we chiefly refer all these things to but his sovereign pleasure? 
The “times are determined by God” (Acts, xvii. 26). 

Thirdly. The dominion of God is manifested as a governor, as well 
as a lawgiver and proprietor. 

1. In disposing of states and kingdoms. (Ps. Ixxv. 7): ‘God is 
Judge; he puts down one, and sets up another.” ‘ Judge” is to be 
taken not in the same sense that we commonly use the word, for a 
judicial minister in a way of trial, but for a governor; as you know 
the extraordinary governors raised up among the Jews were called 
judges, whence one entire book in the Old Testament is so denomi- 
nated, the Book of Judges. God hath a prerogative to ‘change 
times and seasons” (Dan. ii. 21), 2. e. the revolutions of government, 
whereby times are altered. How many empires, that have spread 
their wings over a great part of the world, have had their carcasses 
torn in pieces; and unheard-of nations plucked off the wings of the 
Roman eagle, after it had preyed upon many nations of the world ; 
and the Macedonian: empire was as the dew that is dried up a short 
time after it falls! He erected the Chaldean monarchy, used Nebu- 
chadnezzar to overthrow and punish the ungrateful Jews, and, by a 

Mr. Mede, in one of his letters 


414 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


sovereign act, gave a great parcel of land into his hands; and what 
he thought was his right by conquest, was God’s donative to him. 
You may read the charter to Nebuchadnezzar, whom he terms his 
servant (Jer. xxvii. 6): “ And now I have given all those lands” (the 
lands are mentioned ver. 8), ‘‘fnto the hands of Nebuchadnezzar, the 
king of Babylon, my servant:” which decree he pronounceth after 
his asserting his right of sovereignty over the whole earth (ver. 5). 
After that, he puts a period to the Chaldean empire, and by the same 
sovereign authority decrees Babylon to be a spoil to the nations of 
the north country, and delivers her up as a spoil to the Persian (Jer. 
1. 9, 10): and this for the manifestation of his sovereign dominion, 
that he was the Lord, that made peace, and created evil (Isa. xlv. 6, 
7). God afterwards overthrows that by the Grecian Alexander, pro- 

hesied of under the figure of a goat, with ‘one horn between his 
eyes” (Dan. viii.): the swift current of his victories, as swift as his 
motion, showed it to be from an extraordinary hand of heaven, and 
not either from the policy or strength of the Macedonian. His 
strength, in the prophet, is described to be less, being but one horn 
running against the Persian, described under the figure of a ram with 
-two horns: and himself acknowledged a Divine motion exciting 
him to that great attempt, when he saw Joddus, the high-priest, com- 
ing out in his priestly robes, to meet him at his approach to Jeru- 
salem, whom he was about to worship, acknowledging that the vision 
which put him upon the Persian war appeared to him in such a garb. 
What was the reason Israel was rent from Judah, and both split into 
two distinct kingdoms? Because Rehoboam would not hearken to 
sober and sound counsels, but follow the advice of upstarts. W hat 
was the reason he did not hearken to sound advice, since he had so 
advantageous an education under his father Solomon, the wisest 
prince of the world? ‘The cause was from the Lord” (1 Kings, xi. 
15), that he might perform what he had before spoke. In this he 
acted according to his royal word; but, in the first resolve, he acted 
as a sovereign lord, that had the disposal of all nations in the world. 
And though Ahab had a numerous posterity, seventy sons to inherit . 
the throne after him, yet God by his sovereign authority gives them 
up into the hands of Jehu, who strips them of their lives and hopes 
together: not a man of them succeeded in the throne, but the crown 
is transferred to Jehu by God’s disposal. In wars, whereby flour- 
ishing kingdoms are overthrown, God hath the chief hand; in ref 
erence to which it is observed that, in the two prophets, Isaiah and 
Jeremiah, God is called “the Lord of Hosts” one hundred and thirty 
times. It is not the sword of the captain, but the sword of the Lord, 
bears the first rank; ‘the sword of the Lord and of Gideon” (Judges, 
vii. 18). The sword of a conquerer is the sword of the Lord, and 
receives its charge and commission from the great Sovereign (Jer. 
xlvii. 6, 7). We are apt to confine our thoughts to second causes, 
lay the fault upon the miscarriages of persons, the ambition of the 
one, and the covetousness of another, and regard them not as the 
effects of God’s sovereign authority, linking second causes together 
to serve his own purpose. The skill of one man may lay open the 


m Josephus. 
{ 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 415 


folly of a counsellor ; an earthly force may break in pieces the power 
of a mighty prince: but Job, in his consideration of those things, 
refers the matter higher: ‘‘ He looseth the bond of kings, and girdeth 
their loins with a girdle” (Job, xii. 18). ‘ He looseth the bonds of 
kings,” @. e. takes off the yokes they lay upon their subjects, “and 
girds their loins with a girdle” (a cord, as the vulgar); he lays upon 
them those fetters they framed for others; such a girdle, or band, as 
is the mark of captivity, as the words, ver, 19, confirm it: “ He leads 
princes away spoiled, and overthrows the mighty.” God lifts up 
some to a great height, and casts down others to a disgraceful ruin. 
All those changes in the face of the world, the revolutions of empires, 
the desolating and ravaging wars, which are often immediately the 
birth of the vice, ambition, and fury of princes, are the royal acts of 
God as Governor of the world. All government belongs to him; 
he is the Fountain of all the great and the petty dominions in the 
world; and, therefore, may place in them what substitutes and vice- 
gerents he pleaseth, as a prince may remove his officers at pleasure, 
and take their commissions from them. The highest are settled by 
God durante bene placito, and not quamdiw bene se gesserint. ‘Those 
princes that have been the glory of their country have swayed the 
sceptre but a short time, when the more wolvish ones have remained 
longer in commission, as God hath seen fit for the ends of his own 
sovereign government. Now, by the revolutions in the world, and 
changes in governors and government, God keeps up the acknowl- 
edgment of his sovereignty, when he doth arrest grand and public 
offenders that wear a crown by his providence, and employ it, by 
their pride, against him that placed it there. When he arraigns such 
by a signal hand from heaven, he makes them the public examples 
of the rights of his sovereignty, declaring thereby, that the cedars 
of Lebanon are as much at his foot, as the shrubs of the valley; that 
he hath as sovereign an authority over the throne in the palace, as 
over the stool in the cottage. 

2. The dominion of God is manifested in raising up and ordering 
the spirits of men according to his pleasure. He doth, as the Father 
of spirits, communicate an influence to the spirits of men, as well as 
an existence; he puts what inclinations he pleaseth into the will, 
stores it with what habits he please, whether natural or supernatural, 
whereby it may be rendered more ready to act according to the Di- 
vine purpose. The will of man isa finite principle, and therefore 
subject to Him who hath an infinite sovereignty over all things; and 
God, having a sovereignty over the will, in the manner of its acting, 
causeth it to will what he wills, as to the outward act, and the out- 
ward manner of performing it. There are many examples of this 
part of his sovereignty. God, by his sovereign conduct, ordered 
Moses a protectoress as soon as his parents had formed an “ark of bul- 
rushes,” wherein to set him floating on the river (Exod. ii. 3-6): they 
expose him to the waves, and the waves expose him to the view of 
Pharoah’s daughter, whom God, by his secret ordering her motion, 
had posted in that place; and though she was the daughter of a 
prince that inveterately hated the whole nation, and had, by various 
arts, endeavored to extirpate them, yet God inspires the royal lady 


416 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


with sentiments of compassion to the forlorn infant, though she knew 
him to be one of the Hebrews’ children (ver. 6), 2. e. one of that race 
whom her father had devoted to the hands of the executioner; yet 
God, that doth by his sovereignty rule over the spirits of all men, 
moves her to take that infant into her protection, and nourish him at 
her own charge, give him a liberal education, adopt him as her son, 
who, in time, was to be the ruin of her race, and the saviour of his 
nation. ‘T'hus he appointed Cyrus to be his shepherd, and gave him 
a pastoral spirit for the restoration of the city and temple of Jeru- 
salem (isa. xliv. 28): and Isaiah (chap. xlv. 5) tells them, in the 
prophecy, that he had girded him, though Cyrus had not known 
him, 2. e. God had given him a military spirit and strength for so 
great an attempt, though he did not know that he was acted by God 
for those divine purposes. And when the time came for the house 
of the Lord to be rebuilt, the spirits of the people were raised up, 
not by themselves, but by God (Hzra, 1. 5), ‘‘ Whose spirit God had 
raised to go up;” and not only the spirit of Zerubbabel, the magis- 
trate, and of Joshua, the priest, but the spirit of all the people, from 
the highest to the meanest that attended him, were acted by God to 
strengthen their hands, and promote the work (Hag.i.14). The 
spirits of men, even in those works which are naturally desirable to 
them, as the restoration of the city and rebuilding of the T’emple was 
to those Jews, are acted by God, as the Sovereign over them, much 
more when the wheels of men’s spirits are lifted up above their or- 
dinary temper and motion. It was this empire of God good Nehe- 
miah regarded, as that whence he was to hope for success; he did 
not assure himself so much of it, from the favor he had with the 
king, nor the reasonableness of his intended petition, but the abso- 
lute power God had over the heart of that great monarch; and, there- 
fore, he supplicates the heavenly, before he petitioned the earthly, 
throne (Neh. 1. 4): “So I prayed to the God of heaven.” The 
heathens had some glance of this; it is an expression that Cicero 
hath somewhere, ‘That the Roman commonwealth was rather gov- 
erned by the assistance of the Supreme Divinity over the hearts of 
men, than by their own counsels and management.” How often hath 
the feeble courage of men been heightened to such a pitch as to stare 
death in the face, which before were damped with the least thought 
or glance of it! This is a fruit of God’s sovereign dominion. 

3. The dominion of God is manifest in restraining the furious 
passions of men, and putting a block in their way. Sometimes God 
doth it by a remarkable hand, as the Babel builders were diverted 
from their proud design by a sudden confusion of their language, 
and rendering it unintelligible to one another; sometimes by ordli- 
nary, though unexpected, means; as when Saul, like a hawk, was 
ready to prey upon David, whom he had hunted as a partridge upon 
the mountains, he had another object presented for his arms and 
fury by the Philistines’ sudden invasion of a part of his territory (1 
Sam. xxii. 26—28). But it is chiefly seen by an inward curbing 
mutinous affections, when there is no visible cause. What reason 
but this can be rendered, why the nations bordering on Canaan, who 
bore no good will to the Jews, but rather wished the whole race of 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. ALT 


them rooted out from the face of the earth, should not invade their 
country, pillage their houses, and plunder their cattle, while they 
were left naked of any human defence, the males being annually 
employed at one time at Jerusalem in worship; what reason can be 
rendered, but an invisible curb God put into their spirits? What 
was the reason not a man, of all the buyers and sellers in the Tem- 
ple, should rise against our Saviour, when, with a high hand, he be- 
gan to whip them out, but a Divine bridle upon them? though it ap- 
pears, by the questioning his authority, that there were Jews enough 
to have chased out him and his company (John, ii. 15, 18). What 
was the reason that, at the publishing the gospel by the apostles at 
the first descent of the Spirit, those that had used the Master so bar- 
barously a few days before, were not all in a foam against the ser- 
vants, that, by preaching that doctrine, upbraided them with the late 
murder? Had they better sentiments of the Lord, whom they had 
put to death? Were their natures grown tamer, and their malignity 
expelled? No; but that Sovereign who had loosed the reins of 
their malicious corruption, to execute the Master for the purchase of 
redemption, curbed it from breaking out against the servants, to fur- 
ther the propagation of the doctrine of redemption. He that re- 
strains the roaring lion of hell, restrains also his whelps on earth ; 
he and they must have a commission before they can put forth a 
finger to hurt, how malicious soever their nature and will be. His 
empire reaches over the malignity of devils, as well as the nature of 
beasts. The lions out of the den, as well as those in the den, are 
bridled by him in favor of his Daniels. His dominion is above that 
of principalities and powers; their decrees are at his mercy, whether 
they shall stand or fall; he hath a vote above their stiffest resolves: 
his single word, J will, or, I forbid, outweighs the most resolute pur- 
poses of all the mighty Nimrods of the earth in their rendezvouses 
and cabals, in their associations and counsels (Isa. vii. 9, 10): ‘ As- 
sociate yourselves, O ye people, and ye shall be broken in pieces; 
take counsel together, and it shall come to nought.” ‘When the 
enemy shall come in like a flood,” with a violent and irresistible 
force, intending nothing but ravage and desolation, ‘the Spirit of 
the Lord shall lift up a standard against them” (Isa. lix. 19), shall 
give a sudden check, and damp their spirits, and put them to a stand. 
When Laban furiously pursued Jacob, with an intent to do him an 
ill turn, God gave him a command to do otherwise (Gen. xxxi. 24). 
Would Laban have respected that command any more than he did 
the light of nature when he worshipped idols, had not God exercised 
his authority in inclining his will to observe it, or laying restraints 
upon his natural inclinations, or denying his concourse to the acting 
those ill intentions he had entertained? ‘The stilling the principles 
of commotion in men, and the noise of the sea, are arguments of the 
Divine dominion ; neither the one nor the other is in the power of 
the most sovereign prince without Divine assistance: as no prince 
can command a calm to a raging sea, so no prince can order stillness 
to a tumultuous people; they are both put together as equally parts 
of the Divine prerogative (Ps. lxv. 7), which “stills the noise of the 
sea, and tumult of the people:” and David owns God’s sovereignty 
VOL. IL—27 


418 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


more than his own, “in subduing the people under him” (Ps. xviii. 
47). In this his empire is illustrious (Ps. xxix. 10): “The Lord 
sitteth upon the floods, yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever ;” a King 
impossible to be deposed, not only on the natural floods of the sea, 
that would naturally overflow the world, but the metaphorical floods 
or tumults of the people, the sea in every wicked man’s heart, more 
apt to rage morally than the sea to foam naturally. If you will take 
the interpretation of an angel, waters and floods, in the prophetic 
style, signify the inconstant and mutable people (Rev. xvu. 1, 5): 
“'The waters where the whore sits are people, and multitudes, and 
nations, and tongues:” so the angel expounds to John the vision 
which he saw (ver. 1). The heathens acknowledged this part of 
God’s sovereignty in the inward restraints of men: those apparitions 
of the gods and goddesses in Homer, to several of the great men 
when they were in a fury, were nothing else, in the judgment of the 
wisest philosophers, than an exercise of God’s sovereignty in quelling 
their passions, checking their uncomely intentions, and controlling 
them in that which their rage prompted them to. And, indeed, did 
not God set bounds to the storms in men’s hearts, we should soon see 
- the funeral, not only of religion, but civility ; the one would be blown 
out, and the other torn up by the roots. 

4. The dominion of God is manifest in defeating the purposes and 
devices of men. God often makes a mock of human projects, and 
doth as well accomplish that which they never dreamt of, as disap- 
point that which they confidently designed. He is present at all 
cabals, laughs at men’s formal and studied counsels, bears a hand 
over every egg they hatch, thwarts their best compacted designs, 
supplants their contrivances, breaks the engines they have been 
many years rearing, diverts the intentions of men, as a mighty wind 
blows an arrow from the mark which the archer intended. (Job, v. 
12): ‘He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands 
cannot perform their enterprise; he taketh the wise in their own 
craftiness, and the counsel of the froward is carried headlong.” 
Enemies often draw an exact scheme of their intended proceedings, 
marshal their companies, appoint their rendezvous, think to make 
but one morsel of those they hate; God, by his sovereign dominion, 
turns the scale, changeth the gloominess of the oppressed into a sun- 
shine, and the enemies’ sunshine into darkness. When the nations 
were gathered together against Sion, and said, “ Let her be defiled, 
and let our eye look upon Sion” (Micah, iv. 11), what doth God do 
in this case? (ver. 12), “He shall gather them,” 7. ¢. those conspiring 
nations, as “sheaves into the floor.” Then he sounds a trumpet to 
Sion: “ Arise, and thresh, O daughter of Sion, for I will make thy 
horn iron, and thy hoofs brass, and thou shalt beat in pieces many 
people; and I will consecrate their gain unto the Lord, and their 
substance unto the Lord of the whole earth.” Iwill make them and 
their counsels, them and their strength, the monuments and signal 
marks of my empire over the whole earth. When you see the cun- 
ningest designs baffled by some small thing intervening; when you 
see men of profound wisdom infatuated, mistake their way, and 
“prope in the noon-day as in the night” (Job, v. 14), bewildered im 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 4419 


a plain way ; when you see the hopes of mighty attempters dashed 
into despair, their triumphs turned into funerals, and their joyful ex- 
sims into sorrowful disappointments ; when you see the weak, 

evoted to destruction, victorious, and the most presumptuous de- 
feated in their purposes, then read the Divine dominion in the deso- 
lation of ‘such devices. How often doth God take away the heart 
and spirit of grand designs, and burst a mighty wheel, by snatching 
but one man out of the world! How often doth he “cut off the 
spirits of princes” (Ps. Ixxvi. 12), either from the world by death, or 
from the execution of their projects by some unforeseen interruption, 
or from favoring those contrivances, which before they cherished by 
a change of their minds! How often hath confidence in God, and 
religious prayer, edged the weakest and smallest number of weapons 
to make a carnage of the carnally confident! How often hath pre- 
sumption been disappointed, and the contemned enemy rejoiced in 
the spoils of the proud expectant of victory! Phidias made the 
image of Nemesis, or Revenge, at Marathon, of that marble which 
the haughty Persians, despising the weakness of the Athenian forces, 
brought with them, to erect a trophy for an expected, but an un- 
gained, victory." Haman’s neck, by a sudden turn, was in the 
halter, when the Jews’ necks were designed to the block; Julian de- 
signed the overthrow of all the Christians, just before his breast was 
pierced by an unexpected arrow; the Powder-traitors were all ready 
to give fire to the mine, when the sovereign hand of Heaven snatched 
away the match. Thus the great Lord of the world cuts off men on 
the pinnacle of their designs, when they seem to threaten heaven and 
earth; puts out the candle of the wicked, which they thought to use 
to light them to the execution of their purposes; turns their own 
counsels into a curse to themselves, and a blessing to their adversa- 
ries, and makes his greatest enemies contribute to the effecting his 
purposes. How may we take notice of God’s absolute disposal of 
things in private affairs, when we see one man, with a small measure 
of prudence and little industry, have great success, and others, with 
a greater measure of wisdom, and a greater toil and labor, find their 
enterprises melt between their fingers! It was Solomon’s observa- 
tion, “ That the race was not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, 
neither bread to the wise, nor riches to men of understanding, nor 
yet favor to men of skill” (Eccles. ix. 11)./ Many things might in- 
terpose to stop the swift in his race, and damp the courage of the 
most valiant: things do not happen according to men’s abilities, but 
according to the overruling authority of God: God never yet granted 
man the dominion of his own way, 20 more than to be lord of his 
own time: “The way of man is not in himself, it is not in him that 
walketh to direct his steps” (Jer. x. 23). He hath given man a power 
of acting, but not the sovereignty to command success. He makes 
even those things which men intended for their security to turn to 
their ruin; Pilate delivered up Christ to be accounted a friend to 
Cesar, and Czesar soon after proves an enemy to him, removes him 
from his government, and sends him into banishment. The Jews 
imagined by the crucifying Christ to keep the Roman ensigns at a 

» Causin. Symb. lib. ii. cap. 65. 


42.0 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


distance from them, and this hasted their march, by God’s sovereign 
disposal, which ended in a total desolation. ‘ He makes the judges 
fools” (Job, xxii. 17), by taking away his light from their under- 
standing, and suffering them to go on in the vanity of their own 
spirits, that his sovereignty in the management of things may be 
more apparent; for then he is known to be Lord, when he “snares 
‘the wicked in the work of his own hands” (Ps. ix. 16). You have 
seen much of this doctrine in your experience, and, if my judgment 
fail me not, you will yet see much more. 

5. The dominion of God is manifest in sending his judgments upon 
whom he please. ‘“ He kills and makes alive; he wounds and heals” 
whom he pleaseth: his thunders are his own, and he may cast them 
upon what-subjects he thinks good: he hath a right, in a way of jus- 
tice, to punish all men; he hath his choice, in a way of sovereignty, 
to pick out whom he please, to make the examples of it. Might not 
some nations be as wicked as those of Sodom and Gomorrah, yet 
have not. been scorched with the like dreadful flames? Zoar was 
untouched, while the other cities, her neighbors, were burnt to 
ashes. Were there never any places and persons successors in So- 
~dom’s guilt? Yet those only by his sovereign authority are sepa- 
rated by him to be the examples of his ‘“ eternal vengeance” (Jude, 7). 
Why are not sinners as Sodom, like as those ancient ones, scalded 
to death by the like fiery drops? It is because it is his pleasure; 
and the same reason is to be rendered, why he would in a way of 
justice cut off the Jews for their sins, and leave the Gentiles un- 
touched in the midst of their idolatries. When the church was con- 
sumed because of her iniquities, they acknowJedged God’s sovereign- 
ty in this. ‘We are the clay, and thou art our Potter, and we all 
the work of thy hands” (Isa. lxiv. 7, 8); thou hast a liberty to break 
or preserve us. Judgments move according to God’s order. When 
the sword hath a charge against Ashkelon and the sea-shore, thither 
it must march, and touch not any other place or person as it goes, 
though there may be demerit enough for it to punish. When the 
prophet had spake to the sword, ‘‘O thou sword of the Lord, how 
long will it be ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, 
rest and be still;” the prophet answers for the sword, “ How can it be 
quiet, seeing the Lord hath given it a charge against Ashkelon? 
there hath he appointed it” (Jer. xlvii. 6, 7). If he hath appointed 
a judgment against London or Westminster, or any other place, 
there it shall drop, there it shall pierce, and in no other place with- 
out a like charge. God, as a sovereign, gives instructions to every 
judgment, when, and against whom, it shall march, and what cities, 
what persons, it shall arrest; and he is punctually obeyed by them, 
as a sovereign Lord. All creatures stand ready for his call, and are 
prepared to be executioners of his vengeance, when he speaks the 
word; they are his hosts by creation, and in array for his service: 
at the sound of his trumpet, or beat of his drum, they troop together 
with arms in their hands, to put his orders exactly in execution. 

6. The dominion of God is manifest in appointing to every man 
his calling and station in the world. If the hairs of every man’s 
head fall under his sovereign care, the calling of every man, wherein 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 431 


he is to glorify God and serve his generation, which is of a greater 
concern than the hairs of the head, falls under his dominion. He is 
the master of the great family, and divides to every one his work as 
he pleaseth. T’he whole work of the Messiah, the time of every 
action, as well as the hour of his passion, was ordered and appointed 
by God. The separation of Paul to the preaching of the gospel, was 
by the sovereign disposal of God (Rom. 1.1). By the same exercise 
of his authority, that he “sets every man the bounds of his habita- 
tion” (Acts, xvu. 26), he prescribes also to him the nature of his 
work. He that ordered Adam, the father of mankind, his work, 
and the place of it, the ‘‘ dressing the garden” (Gen. ii. 15), doth not . 
let any of his posterity be their own choosers, without an influence 
of his sovereign direction on them. Though our callings are our 
work, yet they are by God’s order, wherein we are to be faithful to 
our great Master and Ruler. 

7. The dominion of God is manifest in the means and occasions 
of men’s conversion. Sometimes one occasion, sometimes another ; 
one word lets a man go, another arrests him, and brings him before 
God and his own conscience; it is as God gives out the order. He 
lets Paul be a prisoner at Jerusalem, that his cause should not be 
determined there; moves him to appeal to Cezesar, not only to make 
him a prisoner, but a preacher, in Cesar’s court, and render his 
chains an occasion to bring in a harvest of converts in Nero’s palace. 
His bonds in or for Christ are “ manifest in all the palace” (Phil. 1. 
12, 18); not the bare knowledge of his bonds, but the sovereign de- 
sign of God in those bonds, and the success of them; the bare knowl- 
edge of them would not make others more confident for the gospel, 
as it follows, ver. 14, without a providential design of them. Ones- 
imus, running from his master, is guided by God’s sovereign order 
into Paul’s company, and thereby into Christ’s arms; and he who 
came a fugitive, returns a Christian (Philem. 10, 15). Some, by a 
strong affliction, have had by the Divine sovereignty their under- 
standings awakened to consider, and their wills spirited to conver- 
sion. Monica being called Meribibula, or toss-pot, was brought to 
consider her way, and reform her life. A word hath done that at 
one time, which hath often before fallen without any fruit. Many 
have come to suck in the eloquence of the minister, and have found 
in the honey for their ears a sting for their consciences. Austin had 
no other intent in going to hear Ambrose but to have a taste of his 
famous oratory. But while Ambrose spake a language to his ear, 
God spake a heavenly dialect to his heart. No reason can be ren- 
dered of the order, and timing, and influence of those things, but the 
sovereign pleasure of God, who will attend one occasion and season 
with his blessing, and not another. 

8. The dominion of God is manifest in disposing of the lives of 
men. He keeps the key of death, as well as that of the womb, in 
his own hand; he hath given man a life, but not power to dispose 
of it, or lay it down at his pleasure; and therefore he hath ordered 
man not to murder, not another, not himself; man must expect his 
call and grant, to dispose of the life of his body. Why doth he cut 
the thread of this man’s life, and spin another’s out to a longer term ? 


499, CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


Why doth one die an inglorious death, and another more honorable ? 
One silently drops away in the multitude, while another is made a 
sacrifice for the honor of God, or the safety of his country. This is 
a mark of honor he gives to one and not to another. “'T’o you it is 
given” (Phil. i. 29). The manner of Peter’s death was appointed 
(John, xxi. 19). Why doth a small and slight disease against 
the rules of physic, and the judgment of the best practitioners, dis- 
lodge one man’s soul out of his body, while a greater disease is 
mastered in another, and discharges the patient, to enjoy himself a 
longer time in the land of the living? Is it the effect of means so 
much as of the Sovereign Disposer of all things? If means only 
did it, the same means would always work the same effect, and 
sooner master a dwarfish than a giant-like distemper, ‘“ Our times 
are only in God’s hands” (Ps. xxxi. 15); either to cut short or con- 
tinue long. As his sovereignty made the first marriage knot, so he 
reserves the sole authority to himself to make the divorce. 
Fourthly. The dominion of God is manifest in his bemg a Re- 
deemer, as well as Lawgiver, Proprietor, and Governor. His 
- sovereignty was manifest in the creation, in bestowing upon this or 
that part of matter a form more excellent than upon another. He 
was a Lawgiver to men and angels, and prescribed them rules ac- 
cording to the counsel of his own will. ‘These were his creatures, 
and perfectly at his disposal. But in redemption a sovereignty is 
exercised over the Son, the Second person in the Trinity, one equal 
with the Father in essence and works, by whom the worlds were 
created, and by whom they do consist. The whole gospel is nothing 
else but a declaration of his sovereign pleasure concerning Christ, 
and concerning us in him; it is therefore called “ the mystery of his 
will” (Eph. i. 9); the will of God is distinct from the will of Christ, 
a purpose in himself, not moved thereunto by any; the whole 
design was framed in the Deity, and as much the purpose of his 
sovereign will as the contrivance of his immense wisdom. He de- 
creed, in his own pleasure, to have the Second Person assume our 
nature for to deliver mankind from that misery whereinto it 
was fallen. The whole of the gospel, and the privileges of it, are in 
that chapter resolved into the will and pleasure of God, God is 
therefore called “the head of Christ” (1 Cor. xi. 3). As Christ is 
superior to all men, and the man superior to the woman, so is God 
superior to Christ, and of a more eminent dignity; in regard of the 
constituting him mediator, Christ is subject to God, as the body to 
the head. ‘“ Head” is a title of government and sovereignty, 
and magistrates were called the “heads” of the people. As Christ 
is the head of man, so is God the head of Christ ; and as man is sub- 
ject to Christ, so is Christ subject to God; not im regard of the Di- 
vine nature, wherein there is an equality, and consequently no do- 
minion of jurisdiction; nor only in his human nature, but in the 
economy of a Redeemer, considered as one designed, and consenting 
to be incarnate, and take our flesh; so that after this agreement, 
God had a sovereign right to dispose of him according to the articles 
consented to. In regard of his undertaking, and the advantage he 
was to bring to the elect of God upon the earth, he calls God by the 


\ 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 423 


solemn title of ‘his Lord” in that prophetic psalm of him (Ps. xvi. 
2): “Omy soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord: 
my goodness extends not unto thee, but unto the saints that are in 
the earth.” It seems to be the speech of Christ in heaven, mention- 
ing the saints on earth as at a distance from him. I can add nothing 
to the glory of thy majesty, but the whole fruit of my meditation 
and sufferings will redound to the saints on earth. And it may be 
observed, that God is called the Lord of Hosts in the evangelical 
prophets, Isaiah, Haggai, Zachariah, and Malachi, more in reference 
to this affair of redemption, and the deliverance of the church, than 
for any other works of his providence in the world. 

1. This sovereignty of God appears, in requiring satisfaction for 
the sin of man. Had he indulged man after his fall, and remitted 
his offence without a just compensation for the injury he had 
received by his rebellion, his authority had been vilified, man would 
always have been attempting against his jurisdiction, there would 
have been acontinual succession of rebellions on man’s part ; and if a 
continual succession of indulgences on God’s part, he had quite dis- 
owned his authority over man, and stripped himself of the flower of 
his crown; satisfaction must have been required some time or other 
from the person thus rebelling, or some other in his stead; and to 
require it after the first act of sin, was more preservative to the night 
of the Divine sovereignty, than to do it after a multitude of repeated 
revolts. God must have laid aside his authority if he had laid aside 
wholly the exacting punishment for the offence of man. 

9. This sovereignty of God appears, in appointing Christ to this 
work of redemption. His sovereignty was before manifest over 
angels and men by the right of creation; there was nothing wanting 
to declare the highest charge of it, but his ordering his own Son to 
become a mortal creature; the Lord of all things to become lower 
than those angels that had, as well as all other things, received their 
being and beauty from him, and to be reckoned in his death among 
the dust and refuse of the world: he by whom God created all 
things, not only became a man, but a crucified man, by the will of 
his Father (Gal. i. 4), “who gave himself for our sins according to 
the will of God;” to which may refer that expression (Prov. vill. 
92), of his being “ possessed by God in the begining of his way.” 
Possession is the dominion of a thing invested in the possessor ; he 
was possessed, indeed, as a Son by eternal generation; he was pos- 
sessed also in the beginning of his way or works of creation, as a 
Mediator by special constitution: to this the expression seems to re- 
fer, if you read on to the end of ver. 31, wherein Christ speaks of 
his “rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth,” the earth of the 
great God, who hath designed him to this special work of redemp- 
tion. He was a Son by nature, but a Mediator by Divine will; in 
regard of which Christ is often called God’s servant, which is a rela- 
tion to God asa Lord. God being the Lord of all things, the do- 
minion of all things inferior to him is inseparable from him ; and in 
this regard, the whole of what Christ was to de, and did actually do, 
was acted by him as the will of God, and is expressed so by himself 
in the prophecy (Ps. xl. 7), ‘Lo, I come;” (ver. 8), “I delight to do 


424 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


thy will ;” which are put together (Heb. x. 7), ‘‘ Lo, I come to do 
thy will, O God.” The designing Christ to this work was an act of 
mercy, but founded on his sovereignty. His compassionate bowels 
might have pitied us without his being sovereign, but without it 
could not have relieved us. It was the council of his own will, as 
weil as of his bowels: none was his counsellor or persuader to that 
mercy he showed: (Rom. xi. 84), “ Who hath been his counsellor ?” 
for it refers to that mercy in “sending the Deliverer out of Sion” 
(ver. 26), as well as to other things the apostle had been discoursing 
of. As God was at liberty to create, or not to create, so he was at 
liberty to redeem or not to redeem, and at his liberty whether to ap- 
point Christ to this work, or not to call him out to it. In giving 
this order to his Son, his sovereignty was exercised in a higher man- 
ner than in all the orders and instructions he hath given out to men 
or angels, and all the employments he ever sent them upon. Christ 
hath names which signify an authority over him: he is called “an 
Angel,” and a ‘‘ Messenger” (Mal. iii. 1); an “ Apostle” (Hebadiiyine 
declaring thereby, that God hath as much authority over him as 
over the angels sent upon his messages, or over the apostles com- 
missioned by his authority, as he was considered in the quality of 
Mediator. 

3. ‘This sovereignty of God appears in transferring our sins upon 
Christ. The supreme power in a nation can only appoint or allow 
of a commutation of punishment; it is a part of sovereignty to 
transfer the penalty due to the crime of one upon another, and ‘sub- 
stitute a sufferer, with the sufferer’s own consent, in the place of a 
criminal, whom he had a mind to deliver from a deserved punish- 
ment. God transferred the sins of men upon Christ, and inflicted on 
him a punishment for them. He summed up the debts of man, 
charged them upon the score of Christ, imputing to him the guilt, 
and inflicting upon him the penalty. (Isa. li, 6): “The Lord hath 
laid upon him the iniquity of us all;” he made them all to meet 
upon his back: ‘“ He hath made him to be sin for us” (2 Cor. v. 21); 
he was made so by the sovereign pleasure of God: a punishment for 
sin, as most understand it, which could not be righteously inflicted, 
had not sin been first righteously imputed, by the consent of Christ, 
and the order of the Judge of the world. This imputation could be 
the immediate act of none but God, because he was the gole creditor. 
A creditor is not bound to accept of another's suretyship, but it is at 
his liberty whether he will or no; and when he doth accept of him, 
he may challenge the debt of him, as if he were the principal debtor 
himself. Christ made himself sin for us by a voluntary submission ; 
and God made him sin for us by a full imputation, and treated him 
penally, as he would have done those sinners in whose stead he suf: 
fered. Without this act of sovereignty in God, we had forever 
perished: for if we could suppose Christ laying down his life for us 
without the pleasure and order of God, he could not have been said 
to have borne our punishment. What could he have undergone in 
his humanity but a temporal death? But more than this was due 
to us, even the wrath of God, which far exceeds the calamity of a 
mere bodily death. The soul being principal in the crime, was to 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 425 


be principal in the punishment. The wrath of God could not have 
dropped upon his soul, and rendered it so full of agonies, without 
the hand of God: a creature is not capable to reach the soul, neither 
as to comfort nor terror ; and the justice of God could not have made 
him a sufferer, if it had not first considered him a sinner by imputa- 
tion, or by inherency, and actual commission of a crime in his own 
person. The latter was far from Christ, who was holy, harmless, 
and undefiled. He must be considered then in the other state of 
imputation, which could not be without a sovereign appointment, or 
at least concession of God: for without it, he could have no more 
authority to lay down his life for us, than Abraham could have had to 
have sacrificed his son, or any man to expose himself to death without 
a call; nor could any plea have been entered in the court of heaven, 
either by Christ for us, or by us for ourselves. And though the 
death of so great a person had been meritorious in itself, it had not 
been meritorious for us, or accepted for us; Christ is “ delivered up 
by him” (Rom. vii. 82), in every part of that condition wherein he 
was, and suffered; and to that end, that “we might become the 
righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor. v. 21): that we might have the 
righteousness of him that was God imputed to us, or that we might 
have a righteousness as great and proportioned to the righteousness 
of God, as God required. It was an act of Divine sovereignty to 
account him that was righteous a sinner in our stead, and to account 
us, who were sinners, righteous upon the merit of his death. 

4. This was done by the command of God; by God as a Lawgiver, 
having the supreme legislative and preceptive authority: in which 
respect, the whole work of Christ is said to be an answer to a law, 
not one given him, but put into his heart, as the law of nature was 
in the heart of man at first. (Ps. xl. 7, 8): “Thy law is within my 
heart.” This law was not the law of nature or moral law, though 
that was also in the heart of Christ, but the command of doing 
those things which were necessary for our salvation, and not a com- 
mand so much of doing, as of dying. The moral law in the heart 
of Christ would have done us no good without the mediatory law; 
we had been where we were by the sole observance of the precepts 
of the moral law, without his suffering the penalty of it: the law in 
the heart of Christ was the law of suffering, or dying, the doing that 
for us by his death which the blood of sacrifices was unable to effect. 
Legal “sacrifices thou wouldest not; thy law is within my heart ;” 
dé. thy law ordered me to be a sacrifice; it was that law, his obedi- 
ence to which was principally accepted and esteemed, and that was 
principally his passive, his obedience to death (Phil. i. 8); this was 
the special command received from God, that he should die (John 
x. 18). Itis not so clearly manifested when this command was given, 
whether after the incarnation of Christ, or at the point of his consti- 
tution as Mediator, upon the transaction between the Father and the 
Son concerning the affair of redemption : the promise was given a be- 
fore the world began” (Tit. i. 2). Might not the precept be given, 
before the world began, to Christ, as considered in the quality of 
Mediator and Redeemer ? Precepts and promises usually attend one 
another; every covenant is made up of both. Christ, considered 


426 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


here as the Son of God in the Divine nature, was not capable of a 
command or promise; but considered in the relation of Mediator be- 
tween God and man, he was capable of both. Promises of assist- 
ance were made before his actual incarnation, of which the Prophets 
are full: why not precepts for his obedience, since long before his 
incarnation this was his speech in the Prophet, “Thy law is within 
my heart!” however, a command, a law it was, which is a fruit of 
the Divine sovereignty; that as the sovereignty of God was im- 
peached and violated by the disobedience of Adam, it might be 
owned and vindicated by the obedience of Christ; that as we tell by 
disloyalty to it, we might rise by the highest submission to it im an- 
other head, infinitely superior in his person to Adam, by whom 
we fell. 

5. This sovereignty of God appears in exalting Christ to such a 
sovereign dignity as our Redeemer. Some, indeed; say, that this sov- 
ereignty of Christ’s human nature was natural, and the right of it 
resulted from its union with the Divine; as a lady of mean condi- 
tion, when espoused and married to a prince, hath, by virtue of that, 
a natural right to some kind of jurisdiction over the whole kingdom, 
because she is one with the king.c But to waive this; the Scripture 
placeth wholly the conferring such an authority upon the pleasure 
and will of God. As Christ was a gift of God’s sovereign will to us, 
so this was a gift of God’s sovereign will to Christ (Matt. xxvii. 28) : 
“ All power is given me.” And he “gave him to be head over all 
things to the church” (Eph. i. 22); “God gave him a name above 
every name” (Phil. ii. 9); and, therefore, his throne he sits upon 1s 
called ‘The throne of his Father” (Rev. iii. 21). And he ‘‘ commit- 
ted all judgment to the Son,” @. e. all government and dominion ; an 
empire in heaven and earth (John, v. 22); and that because he is ‘‘ the 
Son of Man” (ver. 27); which may understood, that the Father hath 
given him authority to exercise that judgment and government as 
the Son of Man, which he originally had as the Son of God; or 
rather, because he became a servant, and humbled himself to death, 
he gives him this authority as the reward of his obedience and hu- 
mility, conformable to Phil. ii. 9. This is an act of the high sover- 
eignty of God, to obscure his own authority in a sense, and take 
into association with him, or vicarious subordination to him, the hu- 
man nature of Christ as united to the Divine; not only lifting it 
above the heads of all the angels, but giving that person in our na- 
ture an empire over them, whose nature was more excellent than 
ours: yea, the sovereignty of God appears in the whole management 
of this kingly office of Christ; for it is managed im every part of it 
according to God’s order (Ezek. xxxvil. 24, 25): “David, my ser- 
vant, shall be king over them,” and ‘“‘ my servant David shall be 
their prince forever :” he shall be a prince over them, but my servant 
in that principality, in the exercise and duration of it. The sover- 
eionty of God is paramount in all that Christ hath done as a priest, 
or shall do as a king. 

Use I. For instruction. 

1. How great is the contempt of this sovereignty of God! Man 

© Jessius, de Perfect. Divin. lib. x. p. 65. 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 427 


naturally would be free from God’s empire, to be a slave under the 
dominion of his own lust; the sovereignty of God, as a Lawgiver, 
is most abhorred by man (Lev. xxvi. 48). The Israelites, the best 
people in the world, were apt, by nature, not only to despise, but ab- 
hor, his statutes ; there is not a law of God but the corrupt heart of 
man hath an abhorrency of: how often do men wish that God had 
not enacted this or that law that goes against the grain! and, in wish- 
ing so, wish that he were no sovereign, or not such a sovereign as he 
isin his own nature, but one according to their corrupt model. This 
is the great quarrel between God and man, whether he or they shall be 
the Sovereign Ruler. He should not, by the will of man, rule in any 
one village in the world; God’s vote should not be predominant in 
any one thing. ‘There is not a law of his but is exposed to contempt 
by the perverseness of man (Prov. i. 21): “Ye have set at nought 
all my counsel, and would have none of my reproof:” Septuag. “ Ye 
have made all my counsels without authority.” The nature of man 
cannot endure one precept of God, nor one rebuke from him; and 
for this cause God is at the expense of judgments in the world, to 
assert his own empire to the teeth and consciences of men (Ps. lix. 
13): “Lord, consume them in wrath, and let them know that God 
rules in Jacob, to the ends of the earth.” The dominion of God is 
not slighted by any creature of this world but man; all others ob- 
serve it by observing his order, whether in their natural motions or 
preternatural irruptions ; they punctually act according to their com- 
mission. Man only speaks a dialect against the strain of the whole 
creation, and hath none to imitate him among all the creatures in 
heaven and earth, but only among those in hell: man is more im- 
patient of the yoke of God than of the yoke of man. There are 
not so many rebellions committed by inferiors against their superi- 
ors and fellow-creatures, as are committed against God. <A willing 
and easy sinning is an equalling the authority of God to that of man 
(Hos. vi. 7): “ They, like men, have transgressed my covenant ;” they 
have made no more account of breaking my covenant than if they 
had broken some league or compact made with a mere man; so 
shghtly do they esteem the authority of God; such a disesteem of 
the Divine authority is a virtual undeifying of him.p To slight his 
sovereignty is to stab his Deity; since the one cannot be preserved 
without the support of the other, his life would expire with his au- 
thority. How base and brutish is it for vile dust and mouldering 
clay to lift up itself against the majesty of God, whose throne is in 
the heavens, who sways his sceptre over all parts of the world—a 
Majesty before whom the devils shake, and the highest cherubims 
tremble! It is as if the thistle, that can presently be trod down by 
the foot of a wild beast, should think itself a match for the cedar of 
Jiebanon, as the phrase is, 2 Kings, xiv. 9. 

Let us consider this in general; and, also, in the ordinary practice 
ofmen. rst, In general. 

(1.) All sin in its nature is a contempt of the Divine dominion. 
As every act of obedience is a confirmation of the law, and conse- 
quently a subscription of the authority of the Lawgiver (Deut. xxvii. 

P Munster. 


A428 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


26), so every breach to it is a conspiracy against the sovereignty of 
the Lawgiver; setting up our will against the will of God is an arti- 
cling against his authority, as setting up our reason against the 
methods of God is an articling against his wisdom; the intendment 
of every act of sin is to wrest the sceptre out of God’s hand. The 
authority of God is the first attribute in the Deity which it directs 
its edge against; it is called, therefore, a ‘transgression of his law” 
(1 John, iti. 4), and, therefore, a slight, or neglect, of the majesty of 
God; and the not keeping his commands is called a “ forgetting 
God” (Deut. viii. 11), ¢. e. a forgetting him to be our absolute Lord. 
As the first notion we have of God as a Creator is that of his sover- 
eignty, so the first perfection that sin struck at, in the violation of 
the law, was his sovereignty asa Lawgiver. “Breaking the law is 
a dishonoring God” (Rom. il. 23), a snatching off his crown; to obey 
our own wills before the will of God, is to prefer ourselves as our 
own sovereigns before him. Sin is a wrong, and injury to God, not 
in his essence, that is above the reach of a creature, nor in anything 
profitable to him, or pertaining to his own intrinsic advantage; not 
-an injury to God in himself, but in his authority, in those things 
which pertain to his glory ; a disowning his due right, and not using 
his goods according to his will. Thus the whole world may be ~ 
called, as God calls Chaldea, “a land of rebels” Jer. 1, 21): “Go 
up against the land of Merathaim,” or rebels: rebels, not against the 
Jews, but against God. The mighty opposition in the heart of man 
to the supremacy of God is discovered emphatically by the apostle 
(Rom. vii. 7) in that expression, “ The carnal mind is enmity against 
God, 2. e. against the authority of God, because ‘it is not subject. to 
the law of God, neither indeed can be.” It refuseth not subjection, 
to this or that part, but to the whole; to every mark of Divine au- 
thority in it; it will not lay down its arms against it, nay, 1t cannot 
but stand upon its terms against it; the law can no more be fulfilled 
by a carnal mind, than it can be disowned by a sovereign God. 
God is so holy, that he cannot alter a righteous law, and man is so 
averse, that he cares not for, nay, cannot fulfil, one title; so much 
doth the nature of man swell against the majesty of God. Now an 
enmity to the law, which is in every si, impliesa perversity against 
the authority of God that enacted it. 

(2.) All sin, in its nature, is the despoiling God of his sole sover- 
eignty, which was probably the first thing the devil aimed at. That 
pride was the sin of the devil, the Scripture gives us some account 
of, when the apostle adviseth not a novice, or one that hath but 
lately embraced the faith, to be chosen a bishop (1 Tim. in. 6), “ Lest, 
being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the 
devil ;” lest he fall into the same sin for which the devil was con- 
demned. But in what particular thing this pride was manifest, is _ 
not so easily discernible; the ancients generally conceived it to be 
an affecting the throne of God, grounding it on Isa. xiv. 12: “ How 
art thou fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning! for thou hast said in 
thy heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above 
the stars of God.” It is certain the prophet speaks there of the king 
of Babylon, and taxeth him for his pride, and gives to him the title 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 499 


of “ Lucifer,” perhaps likening him in his pride to the devil, and 
then it notes plainly the particular sin of the devil, attempting a 
share in the sovereignty of God; and some strengthen their conjec- 
ture from the name of the archangel who. contended against Satan 
(Jude, 9), which is Michael, which signifies, ‘‘ Who as God?” or, 
“ Who like God?” the name of the angel giving the superiority to 
God, intimating the contrary disposition in the devil, against whom 
he contended. It is likely his sin was an affecting equality with 
God in empire, or a freedom from the sovereign authority of God ; 
because he imprinted such a kind of persuasion on man at his first 
temptation: “ Ye shall be as gods” (Gen. ili. 5); and though it be 
restrained to the matter of knowledge, yet that being a fitness for 
government, it may be extended to that also. But itis plainly a 
persuading them, that they might be, in some sort, equal with God, 
and independent on him as their superior. What he had found so 
fatal to himself, he imagined would have the same success in the ruin 
of man. And since the devil hath, in all ages of the world, usurped 
a worship to himself which is only due to God, and would be served 
by man, as if he were the God of the world; since all his endeavor 
was to be worshipped as the Supreme God on earth, it is not unrea- 
sonable to think, that he invaded the supremacy of God in heaven, 
and endeavored to be like the Most High before his banishment, as 
he hath attempted to be like the Most High since. And since the 
devil and antichrist are reputed by John, in the Revelation, to be so 
near of kin, and so like in disposition, why might not that, which is 
the sin of antichrist, the image of him, be also the sin of Satan, “ to 
exalt himself above all that is called God” (2 Thess. ii. 4), and ‘‘ sit 
as God in his temple,” affecting a partnership in his throne and 
worship? Whether it was this, or attempting an unaccountable do- 
minion over created things, or because he was the prime angel, and 
the most illustrious of that magnificent corporation, he might think 
himself fit to reign with God over all things else? Orif his sin 
were envy, as some think, at the felicity of man in paradise, 1t was 
still a quarrelling with God’s dominion, and right of disposing his 
own goods and favors; he is, therefore, called “ Belial” (2 Cor. vi. 
14, 15): “ What concord hath Christ with Belial?” 7. e. with the 
devil, one “ without yoke,” as the word “ Belial” signifies. 

(3.) It is more plain, that this was the sin of Adam, The first 
act of Adam was to exercise a lordship over the lower creatures, in 
giving names to them,—a token of dominion (Gen. 11. 19). The next 
was to affect a lordship over God, in rebelling against him. After 
he had writ the first mark of his own delegated dominion, in the 
names he gave the creatures, and owned their dependence on him as 
their governor, he would not acknowledge his own dependence on 
God. As soon as the Lord of the world had put him into possession 
of the power he had allotted him, he attempted to strip his Lord of 
that which he had reserved to himself; he was not content to lay a 
yoke upon the other creatures, but desirous to shake off the Divine 
yoke from himself, and be subject to none but his own will; hence 
Adam’s sin is more particularly called “disobedience” (Rom. v. 19): 
for, in the eating the apple, there was no moral evil in itself, but a 


430 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


contradiction to the positive command and order of God, whereby he 
did disown God’s right of commanding him, or reserving anything 
from him to his own use. The language all his posterity speaks, 
“‘ Let us break his bands, and cast away his cords from us” (Ps. ii. 
3), was learned from Adam in that act of his. The next act we read 
of, was that of Cain’s murdering Abel, which was an invading. God’s 
right, in assuming an authority to dispose of the life of his brother, 
—a life which God had given him, and reserved the period of it in 
his own hands. And he persists in the same usurpation when God 
came to examine him, and ask him where his brother was; how 
scornful was his answer! (Gen. iv. 9): ‘‘ Am I my brother’s keeper ?” 
as much as if he had said, What have you to do to examine me? or, 
What obligation is there upon me to render an account of him? or, as 
one saith, itis as much as if he had said, ‘“‘ Go, look for him yourself.’ 
The sovereignty of God did not remain undisturbed as soon as ever 
it appeared in creation ; the devils rebelled against it in heaven, and 
man would have banished it from the earth. 

(4.) The sovereignty of God hath not been less invaded by the 
usurpations of men. One single order of the Roman episcopacy 
hath endeavored to usurp the prerogatives of God; the Pope will 
prohibit what God hath allowed; the marriage of priests; the re- 
ceiving of the cup, as well as of the bread, in the sacrament; the 
eating of this or that sort of meat at special times, meats which God 
hath sanctified ; and forbid them, too, upon pain of damnation. It 
is an invasion of God’s right to forbid the use of what God hath 
granted, as though the earth, and the fulness thereof, were no longer 
the Lord’s, but the Pope’s; much more to forbid what God hath 
commanded, as if Christ overreached his own authority, when he en- 
joined all to drink of the sacramental wine, as well as eat of the 
sacramental bread. No lord but will think his right usurped by that 
steward who shall permit to others what his lord forbids, and forbid 
that which his master allows, and act the lord instead of the servant. 
Add to this the pardons of many sins, as if he had the sole key to 
the treasures of Divine mercy; the disposing of crowns and domin- 
ions at his pleasure, as if God had divested himself of the title of 
King of kings, and transferred it upon the see of Rome. The allow- 
ing public stews, dispensing with incestuous marriages, as if God had 
acted more the part of a tyrant than of a righteous Sovereign in for- 
bidding them, depriving the Jews of the propriety in their estates 
upon their conversion to Christianity, as if the pilfering men’s goods 
were the way to teach them self-denial, the first doctrine of Christian 
religion; and God shall have no honor from the Jew without a 
breach of his law by theft from the Christian. Granting many 
years’ indulgences upon slight performances, the repeating so many 
Ave-Marias and Pater-Nosters in a day, canonizing saints, claiming 
the keys of heaven, and disposing of the honors and glory of it, and 
proposing creatures as objects of religious worship, wherein he an- 
swers the character of the apostle (2 Thess. i. 4), “showing himself 
that he is God,” in challenging that power which is only the right 
of Divine sovereignty; exalting himself above God, in indulging 

q Trap. in loc. 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 431 


those things which the law of God never allowed, but hath severely 

rohibited. This controlling the sovereignty of God, not allowing 
ne the rights of his crown, is the soul and spirit of many errors. 
Why are the decrees of election and preterition denied? Because 
men will not acknowledge God the Sovereign Disposer of his crea- 
ture. Why is effectual calling and efficacious grace denied? Be- 
cause they will not allow God the proprietor and distributer of his 
own goods. Why is the satisfaction of Christ denied? Because 
they will not allow God a power to vindicate his own law in what 
way he pleaseth. Most of the errors of men may be resolved into a 
denial of God’s sovereignty ; all have a tincture of the first evil sen- . 
timent of Adam. 

Secondly. The sovereignty of God is contemned in the practices of 
men—(1.) As he is a Lawgwer. 

[1.] When laws are made, and urged in any state contrary to the 
law of God. It is part of God’s sovereignty to be a Lawgiver; not 
to obey his law is a breach made upon his right of government; but 
it is treason in any against the crown of God, to mint laws with a 
stamp contrary to that of heaven, whereby they renounce their due 
subjection, and vie with God for dominion, snatch the supremacy 
from him, and account themselves more lords than the Sovereign 
Monarch of the world. When men will not let God be the judge 
of good and evil, but put in their own vote, controlling his to estab- 
lish their own; such are not content to be as gods, subordinate to 
the supreme God, to sit at his feet; nor co-ordinate with him, to sit 
equal upon his throne ; but paramount to him, to over-top and shadow 
his crown ;—a boldness that leaves the serpent, in the first temp- 
tation, under the character of a more commendable modesty ; who 
advised our first parents to attempt to be as gods, but not above 
him, and would enervate a law of God, but not enact a contrary one 
to be observed by them. Such was the usurpation of Nebuchad- 
nezzar, to set up a golden image to be adored (Dan. iii.), as if he had 
power to mint gods, as well as to conquer men; to set the stamp of 
a Deity upon a piece of gold, as well as his own effigies upon his 
current coin. Much of the same nature was that of Darius, by the 
motion of his flatterers, to prohibit any petition to be made to God 
for the space of thirty days, as though God was not to have a wor- 
ship without a license from a doting piece of clay (Dan. vi. 7). So 
Henry the Third of France, by his edict, silenced masters of families 
from praying with their households." And it is a farther contempt 
of God’s authority, when good men are oppressed by the sole weight 
of power, for not observing such laws, as if they had a real sover- 
eignty over the consciences of men, more than God himself:s When 
the apostles were commanded by an angel from God, to preach in 
the Temple the doctrine of Christ (Acts, v. 19, 20), they were fetched 
from thence with a guard before the council (ver. 6).. And what is 
the language of those statesmen to them? as absolute as God him- 
self could speak to any transgressors of his law. ‘‘ Did not we straitly 
command you, that you should not teach in this name?” (ver. a 
It is sufficient that we gave yuo a command to be silent, and publis 

F Trap. in loc. * Faucheur, Vol. Il. pp. 663, 664, 


432, CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


no more this doctrine of Jesus; it is not for you to examine our de- 
erees, but rest in our order as loyal subjects, and comply with your 
rulers; they might have added,—though it be with the damnation 
of your souls. How would those overrule the apostles by no other 
reason but their absolute pleasure! And though God had espoused 
their cause, by delivering them out of the prison, wherein they had 
locked them the day before, yet not one of all this council had the 
wit or honesty to entitle it a fighting against God, but Gamaliel (ver. 
29). So foolishly fond are men to put themselves in the place of 
God, and usurp a jurisdiction over men’s consciences: and to pre- 
sume that laws made against the interest and command of God, must 
be of more force than the laws of God’s enacting. F 

[2.] The sovereignty of God is contemned in making additions to 
thelaws of God. The authority ofa sovereign Lawgiver isinvaded and 
vilified when aninferior presumes to make orders equivalent to his 
edicts. It is a premunire against heaven to set up an authority dis- 
tinct from that of God, or to enjoin anything as necessary in matter 
of worship for which a Divine commission cannot be shown. God 
was always so tender of this part of his prerogative, that he would 
not have anything wrought in the tabernacle, not a vessel, not an 
instrument, but what himself had prescribed. ‘“ According to all that 
I show thee, after the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of 
all the instruments thereof, even so shall ye make it” (Exod. xxv. 9) ; 
which is strictly urged again, ver. 40: “ Look that thou make them 
after their pattern ;” look to it, beware of doing anything of thine 
own head, and justling with my authority. It was so afterwards in 
the matter of the temple, which succeeded the tabernacle; God gave 
the model of it to David, and made him “understand in writing by 
his hand upon him, even all the works of this pattern” (1 Chron 
xxvii. 19). Neither the royal authority in Moses, who was king is 
Jesurun; nor in David, who was a man after God’s own heart, and 
called to the crown by a special and extraordinary providence; nor 
Aaron, and the high priests his successors, invested in the sacerdotal 
office, had any authority from God, to do anything in the framing 
the tabernacle or temple of their own heads. God barred them from 
anything of that nature, by giving them an exact pattern, so dear to 
him was always this flower of his crown. And afterwards, the power 
of appointing officers and ordinances in the church was delegated to 
Christ, and was among the rest of those royalties given to him, which 
he fully completed “for the edifying of the body” (Hph. iv. 11, 12); 
and he hath the eulogy by the Spirit of God, to be “faithful as 
Moses was in all his house, to Him that appointed him” (Heb. 11. 2). 
Faithfulness in a trust implies a punctual observing directions; God 
was still so tender of this, that even Christ, the Son, should no more | 
do anything in this concern without appointment and pattern, than 
“Moses, a servant” (ver. 5, 6). It seems to be a vote of nature to 
refer the original of the modes of all worship to God; and therefore 
in all those varieties of ceremonies among the heathens, there was 
scarce any but were imagined by them to be the dictates and orders 
of some of their pretended deities, and not the resolves of mere hu- 
man authority. What intrusion upon God’s right hath the papacy 


UN GOD'S DOMINION. 433 


made in regard of officers, cardinals, patriarchs, &c., not known in 
any Divine order? In regard of ceremonies in worship, pressed as 
necessary to obtain the favor of God, holy water, crucifixes, altars, 
images, cringings, reviving many of the Jewish and Pagan ceremo- 
nies, and adopting them into the family of Christian ordinances; as 
if God had been too absolute and arbitrary in repealing the one, and 
dashing in pieces the other. When God had by his sovereign order 
framed a religion for the heart, men are ready to usurp an authority 
to frame one for the sense, to dress the ordinances of God in new 
and gaudy habits, to take the eye by a vain pomp; thus affecting a 
Divine royalty, and acting a silly childishness; and after this, to im- 
pose the observation of those upon the consciences of men, is a bold 
ascent into the throne of God; to impose laws upon the conscience, 
which Christ hath not imposed, hath deservedly been thought the 
very spirit of antichrist; it may be called also the spirit of anti-god. 
God hath reserved to himself the sole sovereignty over the con- 
science, and never indulged men any part of it; he hath not given 
man a power over his own conscience, much less one man a power 
over another's conscience. Men have a power over outward things 
to do this or that, where it is determined by the law of God, but not 
the least authority to control any dictate or determination of con- 
science: the sole empire of that is appropriate to God, as one of the 
great marks of his royalty. What an usurpation is it of God’s right 
to make conscience a slave to man, which God hath solely, as the 
Father of spirits, subjected to himself !—an usurpation which, though 
the apostles, those extraordinary officers, might better have claimed, 
yet they utterly disowned any imperious dominion over the faith of 
others (2 Cor. 1. 24), Though in this they do not seem to climb up 
above God, yet they set themselves in the throne of God, envy him 
an absolute monarchy, would be sharers with him in his legislative 
power, and grasp one end of his sceptre in their own hands. They 
do not pretend to take the crown from God’s head, but discover 2 
bold ambition to shuffle their hairy scalps under it, and wear part of 
it upon their own, that they may rule with him, not under him; and 
would be joint lords of his manor with him, who hath, by the apos- 
tle, forbidden any to be “lords of his heritage” (1 Pet. v. 3): and 
therefore they cannot assume such an authority to themselves till 
they can show where God hath resigned this part of his authority to 
them. If their exposition of that place (Matt. xvi. 18), Upon this 
tock I will build my church,” be granted to be true, and that the 
person and successors of Peter are meant by that rock, it could be no 
apology for their usurpations; it is not Peter and his successors shall 
build, but ‘“T will build;” others are instruments in building, but 
they are to observe the directions of the grand Architect. 

[3.]. The sovereignty of God is contemned when men prefer obe- 
dience to men’s laws before obedience to God. As God hath an 
undoubted right, as the Lawgiver and Ruler of the world, to enact 
laws without consulting the pleasure of men, or requiring their con- 
sent to the verifying and establishing his edicts, so are men obliged, 
by their allegiance as subjects, to observe the laws of their Creator, 
without consulting whether they be agreeable to the laws of his re- 

VOL. I1.—28 


434 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


volted creatures. To consult with flesh and blood whether we should 
obey, is to authorize flesh and blood above the purest and most 
sovereign Spirit. When men will obey their superiors, without tak- 
ing in the condition the apostle prescribes to servants (Col. i. 22), 
“Tn singleness of heart fearing God,” and postpone the fear of God 
to the fear of man, it is to render God of less power with them than 
the drop of a bucket, or dust of the balance. When we, out of fear 
of punishment, will observe the laws of men against the laws of God, 
it is like the Egyptians, to worship a ravenous crocodile instead of a 
Deity; when we submit to human laws, and stagger at Divine, it is 
to set man upon the throne of God, and God at the footstool of man; 
to set man above, and God beneath; to make him the tail, and not 
the head, as God speaks in another case of Israel (Deut. xxvii. 13). 
When we pay an outward observation to Divine laws, because they 
are backed by the laws of man, and human authority is the motive 
of our observance, we subject God’s sovereignty to man’s anthority ; 
what he hath from us, is more owing to the pleasure of men than 
any value we have for the empire of God: when men shall commit 
murders, and imbrue their hands in blood by the order of a grandee; 
when the worst sins shall be committed by the order of papal dis- 
pensations; when the use of his creatures, which God hath granted 
and sanctified, shall be abstained from for so many days in the week, 
and so many weeks in the year, because of a Roman edict, the au- 
thority of man is acknowledged, not only equal, but superior, to that 
of God; the dominion of dust and clay is preferred before the un- 
doubted right of the Soverign of the world; the commands of God 
are made less than human, and the orders of men more authoritative 
than Divine, and a grand rebel’s usurpation of God’s right is coun- 
tenanced. When men are more devout in observance of uncertain 
traditions, or mere human inventions, than at the hearing of the un- 
questionable oracles of God; when men shall squeeze their counte- 
nances into a more serious figure, and demean themselves in a more 
religious posture, at the appearance of some mock ceremony, clothed 
in a Jewish or Pagan garb, which hath unhappily made a rent in the 
coat of Christ, and pay a more exact reverence to that which hath no 
Divine, but only a human stamp upon it, than to the clear and plain 
word of God, which is perhaps neglected with sleepy nods, or which 
is worse, entertained with profane scoffs:—this is to prefer the au- 
thority of man employed in trifles, before the authority of the wise 
Lawgiver of the world: besides, the ridiculousness of 1t is as great 
as to adore a glow-worm, and laugh at the sun; or for a courtier to 
be more exact in his cringes and starched postures before a puppet 
than before his sovereign prince. In all this we make not the will 
and authority of God our rule, but the will of man; disclaim oui 
dependence on God, to hang upon the uncertain breath of a creature. 
In all this God is made less than man, and man more than God; 
God is deposed, and man enthroned; God made a slave, and man a 
sovereign above him. To this we may refer the solemn addresses 
of some for the maintenance of the Protestant religion according to 
law, the law of man; not so much minding the law of God, resolving 
to make the law, the church, the state, the rule of their religion, and 


ON GOD’S DOMINION, 435 


change that if the laws be changed, steering their opinions by the 
compass of the magistrate’s judgment and interest. 

(2.) The dominion of God, as a Proprietor, is practically con- 
temned. 

[1.] By envy. When we are not flush and gay, as well spread 
and sparkling as others, this passion gnaws our souls, and we be- 
come the executioners to rack ourselves, because God is the executor 
of his own pleasure, The foundation of this passion is a quarrel 
with God; to envy others the enjoyment of their propriety is to envy 
God his right of disposal, and, consequently, the propriety of his own 
goods; it is a mental theft committed against God; we rob him of his 
right in our will and wish; it is a robbery to make ourselves equal 
with God when it is not our due, which is implied (Phil. ii. 6), when 
Christ is said “to think it no robbery to be equal with God.” We 
would wrest the sceptre out of his:hand, wish he were not the con- 
ductor of the world, and that he would resign his sovereignty, and 
the right of the distribution of his own goods, to the capricios of our 
humor, and ask our leave to what subjects he should dispense his 
favors. All envy is either a tacit accusation of God as an usurper, 
and assuming a right to dispose of that which doth not belong to 
him, and so it is a denial of his propriety, or else charges him with 
a blind or unjust distribution, and so it is a bespattering his wisdom 
and righteousness. When God doth punish envy, he vindicates his 
own sovereignty, as though this passion chiefly endeavored to blast 
this perfection (Ezek. xxv. 11, 12): “As I live, saith the Lord, I will 
do according to thy anger, and according to thy envy, and thou shall 
know that 1 am the Lord.” The sin of envy in the devils was im- 
mediately against the crown of God, and so was the sin of envy in 
the first man, envying God the sole prerogative in knowledge above 
himself. This base humor in Cain, at the preference of Abel’s sacri- 
fice before his, was the cause that he deprived him of his life: deny- 
ing God, first his right of choice and what he should accept, and 
then invading God’s right of propriety, in usurping a power over 
the life and being of his brother, which solely belonged to God. 

[2.] The dominion of God, as a proprietor, is practically contemned 
by a violent or surreptitious taking away from any what God hath 
given him the possession of. Since God is the Lord of all, and may 
give the possession and dominion of things to whom he pleaseth, all 
theft and purloining, all cheating and cozening another of his right, 
is not only a crime against the true possessor, depriving him of what 
he is entrusted with, but against God, as the absolute and universal 
proprietor, having a right thereby to confer his own goods upon 
whom he pleaseth, as well as against God as a Lawgiver, forbidding 
such a violence: the snatching away what is another's, denies man 
the right of possession, and God the right of donation: the Israelites 
taking the Heyptians’ jewels had been theft had it not been by a 
Divine license and order, but cannot be slandered with such a term, 
after the Proprietor of the whole world had altered the title, and 
alienated them by his positive grant from the Egyptians, to confer 
them upon the Israelites. 

[3.] The dominion of God, as a proprietor, is practically contemned 


436 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


by not using what God hath given us for those ends for which he 
gave them to us. God passeth things over to us with a condition to 
use that for his glory which he hath bestowed upon us by his boun- 
ty: he is Lord of the end for which he gives, as well as Lord of what 
he gives; the donor’s right of propriety is infringed when the lands 
and legacies he leaves to a particular use are not employed to those 
ends to which he bequeathed them: the right of the lord of a manor 
is violated when the copyhold is not used according to the condition 
of the conveyance. So it is an invasion of God’s sovereignty not to 
use the creatures for those ends for which we are entrusted with 
them: when we deny ourselves a due and lawful support from them; 
hence covetousness is an invasion of his right: or when we unneces- 
sarily waste them; hence prodigality disowns his propriety: or when 
we bestow not anything upon the relief of others; hence uncharita- 
bleness comes under the same title, appropriating that to ourselves, 
as if we were the lords, when we were but the usufructuaries for our- 
selves, and stewards for others; this is to be “rich to ourselves, not 
to God” (Luke xii. 21), for so are they who employ not their wealth 
_ for the service, and according to the intent, of the donor. Thus the 
Israclites did not own God the true proprietor of their corn, wine, 
and oil, which God had given them for his worship, when they pre- 
pared offerings for Baal out of his stock: “ For she did not know 
that I gave her corn, and wine, and oil, and multiplied her gold and 
silver, which they prepared for Baal” (Hos. ii. 8); as if they had been 
sole proprietors, and not factors by commission, to improve the 
goods for the true owner. It is the same invasion of God's right to 
use the parts and gifts that God hath given us, either as fuel for our 
pride, or advancing self, or a witty scofling at God and religion; 
when we use not religion for the honor of our Sovereign, but a stool 
to rise by, and observe his precepts outwardly, not out of regard to 
his authority, but as a stale to our interest, and furnishing self with 
a little concern and trifle; when men will wrest his word for the favor 
of their lusts, which God intended for the checking of them, and 
make interpretations of it according to their humors, and not according 
to his will discovered in the Scripture, this is to pervert the use of the 
best goods and depositum he hath put into our hands, even Divine 
revelations. Thus hypocrisy makes the sovereignty of God a nullity. 

(3.) The dominion of God, as a Governor, is practically con- 
temned. 

[1.] In idolatry. Since worship is an acknowledgment of God’s 
sovereignty, to adore any creature instead of God, or to pay to any- 
thing that homage of trust and confidence which is due to God, 
though it be the highest creature in heaven or earth, is to acknowl- 
edge that sovereignty to pertain to a creature, which is challenged 
by God; as to set up the greatest lord in a kingdom in the govern- 
ment, instead of the lawful prince, is rebellion and usurpation ; 
and that woman incurs the crime of adultery, who commits it with 
a person of great port and honor, as well as with one of a mean 
condition. While men create anything a god, they own themselves 
supreme above the true God, yea, and above that which they ac- 
count a god; for, by the right of creation, they have a superiority, 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 437 


as it is a deity blown up by the breath of their own imagination. 
The authority of God is in this sin acknowledged to belong to an 
idol; it is called loathing of God as a husband (Hzek. xvi. 45), all 
the authority of God as a husband and Lord over them: so when 
we make anything or any person in the world the chief object and 
prop of our trust and confidence, we act the same part. ‘Trust in an 
idol is the formal part of idolatry; “so is every one that trusts in 
them” (Ps. cxv. 8), ¢. e. in idols: whatsoever thing we make the ob- 
ject of our trust, we rear as an idol. It is not unlawful to have the 
image of a creature, but to bestow divine adoration upon it; it was 
not unlawful for the Eeyptians to possess and use oxen, but to dub 
them gods to be adored, it was: it is not® unlawful to have wealth 
and honor, nor to have gifts and parts, they are the presents of 
God; but to love them above God, to fix our reliance upon them 
more than upon God, is to rob God of his due, who, being our 
Creator, ought to be our confidence. What we want we are to de- 
sire of him, and expect from him. When we confide in anything 
else we deny God the glory of his creation; we disown him to be 
Lord of the world; imply that our welfare is in the hands of, and 
depends upon, that thing wherein we confide; it is not only to 
“ equal it to God” in sovereign power, which is his own phrase (Isa. 
xl. 25), but to prefer it before him in a reproach of him. When the 
hosts of heaven shall be served instead of the Lord of those hosts ; 
when we shall lackey after the stars, depend barely upon their in- 
fluences, without looking up to the great Director of the sun, it 
is to pay an adoration unto a captain in a regiment which is due to 
the general. When we shall “make gold our hope, and say to the 
fine gold, Thou art my confidence,” it 1s to deny the supremacy of 
that God that is above; as well as if we kiss our hands, in a way of 
adoration, to the sun in its splendor, or “the moon walking in its 
brightness,” for Job couples them together (ch. xxxi. 25—28); it is 
to prefer the authority of earth before that of heaven, and honor 
clay above the Sovereign of the world: as if a soldier should con- 
fide more in the rag of an ensign, or the fragment of a drum, for his 
safety, than in the orders and conduct of his general; it were as 
much as is in his power to uncommission him, and snatch from him 
his commander’s staff. When we advance the creature in our love 
above God, and the altar of our soul smokes with more thoughts 
and affections to a petty interest than to God, we lift up that which 
was given us as a servant in the place of the Sovereign, and bestow 
that throne upon it which is to be kept undefiled for the rightful 
Lord, and subject the interest of God to the demands of the crea- 
ture. So much respect is due to God, that none should be placed in 
the throne of our affections equal with him, much less anything to 
perk above him. 

[2.] Impatience is a contempt of God as a governor. When we 
meet with rubs in the way of any design, when our expectations are 
crossed, we will break through all obstacles to accomplish our pro- 
jects, whether God will or no. When we are too much dejected at 
some unexpected providence, and murmur at the instruments of it, 
as if God divested himself of his prerogative of conducting human 


438 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


affairs; when a little cross blows us into a mutiny, and swells us 
into a sauciness to implead God, or make us fret against him (as the 
expression is, Isa. viii. 21), wishing him out of his throne; no sin is 
so devilish as this; there is not any strikes more at all the attributes 
of God than this, against his goodness, righteousness, holiness, wis- 
dom, and doth as little spare his sovereignty as any of the rest: 
what can it be else, but an impious invasion of his dominion, to 
quarrel with him for what he doth, and to say, What reason hast 
thou to deal thus with me? This language is in the nature of all 
impatience, whereby we question his sovereignty, and parallel our 
dominion with his. When men have not that confluence of wealth 
or honor they greedily desired, they bark at God, and revile his 
government: they are angry God doth not more respectfully ob- 
serve them, as though he had nothing to do in their matters, and 
were wanting in that becoming reverence which they think him bound 
to pay to such great ones as they are; they would have God obedient 
to their minds, and act nothing but what he receives a commission 
for from their wills. When we murmur, it is as if we would com- 
_ mand his will, and wear his crown; awresting the sceptre out of his 
hands to sway it ourselves; we deny him the right of government, 
disown his power over us, and would be our own sovereigns: you 
may find the character of it in the language of Jehoram (as man 

understand it), ‘‘ Behold, this evil is of the Lord; what should I 
wait for the Lord any longer?” (2 Kings, vi. 83). This is an evil of 
such a nature, that it could come from none but the hand of God; 
why should I attend upon him, as my Sovereign, that delights to do 
me so much mischief, that throws curses upon me when I expected 
blessings? I will no more observe his directions, but follow my 
own sentiments, and regard not his authority in the lips of his do- 
ting prophet. ‘The same you find in the Jews, when they were un- 
der God’s lash; “ And they said, There is no hope: but we will 
walk after our own devices, and we will every one do the imagina- 
tion of his evil heart” (Jer. xvii. 12): we can expect no good from 
him, and therefore we will be our own sovereigns, and prefer the 
authority of our own imaginations before that of his precepts. Men 
would be their own carvers, and not suffer God to use his right; as 
if a stone should order the mason in what manner to hew it, and in 
what part of the building to place it. We are not ordinarily con- 
cerned so much at the calamities of our neighbors, but swell against 
heaven at a light drop upon ourselves. We are content God should 
be the sovereign of others, so that he will be a servant to us: let 
him deal as he will himself with others, so he will treat us, and 
what relates to us, as we will ourselves. We would have God re- 
sign his authority to our humors, and our humors should be in the 
place of a God to him, to direct him what was fit to do in our cause. 
When things go not according to our vote, our impatience is a wish 
that God was deposed from his throne, that he would surrender his 
seat to some that would deal more favorably, and be more punctual 
observers of our directions. Let us look to ourselves in regard of 
this sin, which is too common, and the root of much mischief. This 
seems to be the first bubbling of Adam’s will; he was not content 


“a 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 439 


with the condition wherein God had placed him, but affected an- 
other, which ended in the ruin of himself, and of mankind. 

(3.| Limiting God in his way of working to our methods, is an- 
other part of the contempt of his dominion. When we will pre- 
scribe him methods of acting, that he should deliver us in this or 
that way, we would not suffer him to be the Lord of his own favors, 
and have the privilege to be his own director. When we will limit 
him to such a time, wherein to work our deliverance, we would rob 
him of the power of times and seasons, which are solely in his 
hand. We would regulate his conduct according to our imagina- 
tions, and assume a power to give laws to our Sovereign. Thus the 
Israelites “limited the Holy One of Israel” (Ps. lxxviii. 41): they 
would control his absolute dominion, and, of a sovereign, make him 
their slave. Man, that is God’s vassal, would set bounds to his 
Lord, and cease to be a servant, and commence master, when he 
would give, not take, directions from him. When God had given 
them manna, and their fancies were weary of that delicious food, 
they would prescribe heaven to rain down some other sort of food 
for them. When they wanted no sufficient provision in the wild- 
erness, they quarrelled with God for bringing them out of Egypt, 
and not presently giving them a place of seed, of figs, vines, and. 

omegranates (Numb. xx. 5), which is called a “striving with the 
Lord” (ver. 18), a contending with him for his Lordship. W hen we 
tempt God, and require a sign of him as a mark of his favor, we 
circumscribe his dominion; when we will not use the means he hath 
appointed, but father our laziness upon a trust in his providence, as 
if ‘we expected he should work a miracle for our relief; when we 
censure him for what he hath done in the course of his providence ; 
when we capitulate with him, and promise such a service, if he will 
do us such a good turn according to our platform, we would bring 
down his sovereign pleasure to our will, we invade his throne, and 
expect a submissive obedience from him. Man _ that hath not wit 
enough to govern himself, would be governing God, and. those that 
cannot be their own sovereigns, affect a sovereignty over heaven. 

[4.] Pride and presumption is another invasion of his dominion. 
When men will resolve to go to-morrow to such a city, to such a 
fair and market, to traffic, and get gain, without thinking of the ne- 
cessity of a Divine license, as if ourselves were the lords of our time 
and of our lives, and God were to lackey after us (James iv. 13, 15): 
“Ye that say, To-day we will go into such a city, and buy and sell, 
whereas ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live;” as if they 
had a freehold, and were not tenants at will to the Lord of the 
manor. When we presume upon our own strength or wit to get the 
better of our adversaries; as the Germans (as Tacitus relates) assured 
themselves, by the numerousness of their army, of a victory against 
the Romans, and prepared chains to fetter the captives before the 
conquest, which were found in their camp after their defeat ;—when 
we are peremptory in expectations of success according to our will; 
as. Pharaoh (Exod. xv. 9), “I will pursue, I will overtake, I will 
divide the spoil, my lust shall be satisfied upon them, I will draw 
my sword, my hand shall destroy them :’? he speaks more like a 


440) CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


god than a man, as if he were the sovereign power, and God only 
his vicar and lieutenant; how he struts, without thinking of a supe- 
rior power to curb him !—when men ascribe to themselves what is 
the sole fruit of God’s sovereign pleasure; as the king of Assyria 
speaks a language fit only to be spoken by God (Isa. x. 18, 14, &e.), 
“I have removed the bounds of the people; my hand hath found 
as a nest the riches of the people; I have gathered all the earth ;’ 
which God declares to be a wrong to his sovereignty by the title 
wherewith he prefaceth his threatening against him (ver. dG) 
“Therefore shall the Lord, the Lord of hosts, send among his fat 
ones leanness,” &c, It is indeed a rifling, if not of his crown, yet 
of the most glittering jewel of it, his glory. “He that mocks the 
poor reproacheth his Maker” (Prov. xvii. 5). He never thinks that 
God made them poor, and himself rich ; he owns not his riches to be 
dropped upon him by the Divine hand. Self is the great invader of 
God's sovereignty ; doth not only spurn at it, but usurp it, and as- 
sume divine honors, payable only to the universal Sovereign. The 
Assyrian was not so modest as the Chaldean, who would impute his 
power and victories to his idol (Hab. i. 11), whom he thought to be 
God, though yet robbing the true God of his authority; and so 
much was signified by their names, Nebuchadnezzar, Evil-Merodach, 
Belshazzar, Nebo, Merodach, Bel, being the Chaldean idols, and the 
names signifying, Lord of wealth, Giver of riches, and the like.— 
When we behave ourselves proudly towards others, and imagine 
ourselves greater than our Maker ever meant us ;—when we would 
give laws to others, and expect the most submissive observances 
from them, as if God had resigned his authority to us, and made ‘us, 
in his stead, the rightful monarchs of the world. To disdain that 
any creature should be above us, is to disdain God’s sovereign dis- 
position of men, and consequently, his own superiority over us. A 
proud man would govern all, and would not have God his Sovereign, 
but his subject; to overvalue ourselves, is to undervalue God. 

[5.] Shght and careless worship of God is another contempt of 
his sovereignty. A prince is contemned, not only by a neglect of 
those reverential postures which are due to him, but in a reproach- 
ful and scornful way of paying them. To behave ourselves un- 
comely or immodestly before a prince, is a disesteem of majesty. 
Sovereignty requires awe in every address, where this is wanting 
there is a disrepect of authority. We contemn God’s dominion 
when we give him the service of the lip, the hand, the knee, and 
deny him that of the heart; as they in Ezekiel, xxxiii. 81, as though 
he were the Sovereign only of the body, and not of the soul. To 
have devout figures of the face, and uncomely postures of the soul, 
is to exclude his dominion from our spirits, while we own it only 
over our outward man; we render him an insignificant Lord, not 
worthy of any higher adorations from us than a senseless statue; we 
demean not ourselves according to his majestical authority over us, 
when we present him not with the cream and quintessence of our 
souls. The greatness of God required a great house, and a costly 
palace (1 Chron. xxix. 11, 16); David speaks it in order to the 
building God a house and a temple; God being a great King ex- 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 44] 


pects a male, the best of our flock (Mal. i. 14), a masculine and vig- 
orous service. When we present him with a sleepy, sickly rheu- 
matic service, we betray our conceptions of him to be as mean as if 
he were some petty lord, whose dominion were of no larger extent 
than a mole-hill, or some inconsiderable village. 

[6.] Omission of the service he hath appointed is another contempt 
of his sovereignty. This is a contempt of his dominion, whereby 
he hath a right to appoint what means and conditions he pleaseth, 
for the enjoyment of his proffered and promised benefits. It is an 
enmity to his sceptre not to accept of his terms after a long series of 
precepts and invitations made for the restoring us to that happiness 
we had lost, and providing all means necessary thereunto, nothing 
being wanting but our own concurrence with it, and acceptance of 
it, by rendering that easy homage he requires. By withholding 
from him the service he enjoins, we deny that we hold anything of 
him; as he that pays not the quit rent, though it be never so small, 
disowns the sovereignty of the lord of the manor; it implies, that 
he is a miserable poor lord, having no right, or destitute of any 
power, to dispose of anything in the world to our advantage (Job, 
xxu. 17): “They say unto God, Depart from us, what can the Al- 
mighty do for them?” They will have no commerce with him in a 
way of duty, because they imagine him to have no sovereign power 
to do anything for them in way of benefit, as if his dominion were 
an empty title, and as much destitute of any authority to com- 
mand a favor for them as any idol. They think themselves to have 
as absolute a disposal of things, as God himself. What can he do 
for us? what can he confer upon us, that we cannot invest ourselves 
in? as though they were sovereigns in an equality with God. Thus 
men live “ without God in the world” (Eph. i. 12), as if there were 
no Supreme Being to pay a respect to, or none fit to receive any 
homage at their hands; withholding from God the right of his 
time and the right of his service, which is the just claim of his 
sovereignty. 

[7.] Censuring others is a contempt of his sovereignty. When 
we censure men’s persons or actions by a rash judgment; when we 
will be judges of the good and evil of men’s actions, where the law 
of God is utterly silent, we usurp God’s place, and invade his right; 
we claim a superiority over the law, and judge God defective, as the 
Rector of the world, in his prescriptions of good and evil. (James, 
iy. 11, 12), “ He that speaks evil of his brother, and judgeth his 
brother, speaks evil of the law, and judgeth the law; there is one 
Lawgiver who is able to save, and to destroy: who art thou that 
judgest another? Do you know what you do in judging another? 
You take upon you the garb of a sovereign, as if he were more your 
servant than God’s, and more under your authority than the authori- 
ty of God; it is a setting thyself in God’s tribunal, and assuming 
his rightful power of judging; thy brother is not to be governed by 
thy fancy, but by God’s law, and his own conscience. 

2. Information. Hence it follows, that God doth actually govern 
the world. He hath not only a right to rule, but “he rules over 
all,” so saith the text. He is “King of kings, and Lord of lords,”— 


449 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


what, to let them do what they please, and all that their lusts prompt 
them to? hath God an absolute dominion? Is it good, and is it 
wise? Is it then a useless prerogative of the Divine nature? Shall 
so excellent a power lie idle, as if God were a lifeless image? 
Shall we fancy God like some lazy monarch, that solaceth himself in 
the gardens of his palace, or steeps himself in some charming pleas- 
ures, and leaves his lieutenants to govern the several provinces, 
which are all members of his empire, according to their own humor? 
Not to exercise this dominion is all one as not to have it; to what 
purpose is he invested with this sovereignty, if he were careless of 
what were done in the world, and regarded not the oppressions of 
men? God keeps no useless excellency by him; he actually reigns 
over the heathen (Ps. xlvii. 8), and those as bad, or worse than 
heathens. It had been a vanity in David to call upon the heavens 
to be glad, and the earth to rejoice, under the rule of a “sleepy 
Deity” (1 Chron. xvi. 31). No; his sceptre is full of eyes, as it was 
painted by the Egyptians; he is always waking, and always more 
than Ahasuerus, reading over the records of human actions. Not to 
exercise his authority, is all one as not to regard whether he keep 
the crown upon his head, or continue the sceptre in hishand. If his 
sovereignty were exempt from care, it would be destitute of justice ; 
God is more righteous than to resign the ensigns of his authority to 
blind and oppressive man; to think that God hath a power, and doth 
not use it for just and righteous ends, is to imagine him an un 
righteous as well as a careless Sovereign; such a thing in a man 
renders him a base man, and a worse governor; it is a vice that dis 
turbs the world, and overthrows the ends of authority, as to have a 
power, and use it well, is the greatest virtue of an earthly sovereign. 
What an unworthy conception is it of God, to acknowledge him to 
be possessed of a greater authority than the greatest monarch, and 
yet to think that he useth it less than a petty lord; that his crown 
is of no more value with him than a feather? This represents God 
impotent, that he cannot, or unrighteous and base, that he will not 
administer the authority he hath for the noblest and justest end. 
But can we say, that he neglects the government of the world? How 
come things then to remain in their due order? How comes the law 
of nature yet to be preserved in every man’s soul? How comes con- 
science to check, and cite, and judge? If God did not exercise his 
authority, what authority could conscience have to disturb man in 
unlawful practices, and to make his sports and sweetness so unpleas- 
ant and sour to him? Hath he not given frequent notices and me- 
morials, that he holds a curb over corrupt inclinations, puts rubs in 
the way of malicious attempters, and often oversets the disturbers 
of the peace of the world ? 

3. Information. God can do no wrong, since he is absolute Sov- 
ereign. Man may do wrong, princes may oppress and rifle, but 
it is a crime in them so to do: because their power is a power of 
government, and not of propriety, in the goods or lives of their 
subjects; but God cannot do any wrong, whatsoever the clamors of 
creatures are, because he can do nothing but what he hath a sov- 
ereign right to do. If he takes away your goods, he takes not 


ON GOD’S DOMINION, 443 


away anything that is yours more than his own, since though he 
entrusted you with them, he divested not himself of the propriety. 
When he takes away our lives, he takes what he gave us by a 
temporary donation, to be surrendered at his call: we can claim no 
right in anything but by his will. He is no debtor to us: and 
since he owes us nothing, he can wrong usin nothing that he takes 
away. His own sovereignty excuseth him in all those acts which 
are most distasteful to the creature. If we crop a medicinal plant 
for our use, or a flower for our pleasure, or kill a lamb for our 
food, we do neither of them any wrong: because the original of 
them was for our use, and they had their life, and nourishment, and 
pleasing qualities for our delhght and support. And are not we 
much more made for the pleasure and use of God, than any of 
those can be for us? “Of him and to him are all things” (Rom. 
xi. 86): hath not God as much right over any one of US, aS OVer 
the meanest worm? ‘Though there be a vast difference in nature 
between the angels in heaven and the worms on earth, yet they are 
all one in regard of subjection to God; he is as much the Lord of 
the one as the other; as much the Proprietor of the one as the 
other; as much the Governor of one as the other;—not a cranny 
in the world is exempt from his jurisdiction ;—not a mite or grain 
of a creature exempt from his propriety. He is not our Lord by 
election ; he was a Lord before we were in being; he had no terms 
put upon him who capitulated with him, and set him in his throne 
by covenant. What oath did he take to any subject at his first in- 
vestiture in his authority? His right is as natural, as eternal as 
himself: as natural as his existence, and as necessary as his Deity. 
Hath he any law but his own will? What wrong can he do that 
breaks no law, that fulfils his law in everything he doth, by ful- 
filling his own will, which as it is absolutely sovereign, so it is in- 
finitely righteous? In whatsoever he takes from us, then, he can- 
not injure us; it is no crime in any man to seize upon his own 
goods to vindicate his own honor; and shall it be thought a wrong 
in God to do such things, besides the occasion he hath from every 
man, and that every day provoking him to do it? He seems rather 
to. wrong himself by forbearing such a seizure, than wrong us by 
executing it, 

4. Information. If God have a sovereignty over the whole world, 
then merit is totally excluded. His right is so absolute over all 
creatures, that he neither is, nor can be, a debtor to any; not to 
the undefiled holiness of the blessed angels, much less to poor earthly 
worms; those blessed spirits enjoy their glory by the title of his 
sovereign pleasure, not by virtue of any obligation devolving from 
them upon God. Are not the faculties, whereby they and we per- 
form any act of obedience, his grant to us? Is not the strength, 
whereby they and we are enabled to do anything pleasing to him, 
a gift from him? Can a vassal merit of his lord, or a slave of his 
master, by using his tools, and employing his strength in his ser- 
vice, though it wasa strength he had naturally, not by donation 
from the man in whose service it is employed? God is Lord of all 
—all is due to him; how can we oblige him bv giving him what 


444 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


is his own, more his to whom it is presented, than ours by whom it 
is offered? He becomes not a debtor by receiving anything from 
us, but by promising something to us.t 

5. Information. If God hath a sovereign dominion over the whole 
world, then hence it follows, that all magistrates are but sovereigns 
under God. He is King of kings, and Lord of lords; all the poten- 
tates of the world are no other than his lieutenants, movable at his 
pleasure, and more at his disposal than their subjects are at theirs. 
Though they are dignified with the title of “ gods,” yet still they 
are at an infinite distance from the supreme Lord; gods under God, 
not to be above him, not to be against him. The want of the due 
sense of their subordination to God hath made many in the world 
act as sovereigns above him more than sovereigns under him. 
Had they all bore a deep conviction of this upon their spirits, such 
audacious language had never dropped from the mouth of Pharaoh: 
“Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice, to let Israel go?” 
(Exod. v. “) presuming that there was no superior to control him, 
nor any in heaven able to be a match for him; Darius had never 
_ published such a doting edict, as to prohibit any petition to God; 
Nero had never fired Rome, and sung at the sight of the devouring 
flames; nor ever had he ripped up his mother’s belly, to see the 
womb where he first lodged, and received a life so hateful to his 
country. Nor would Abner and Joab, the two generals, have ac- 
counted the death of men but a sport and interlude. ‘Let the 
young men arise and play before us” (2 Sam. ii. 14); what play it 
was, the next verse acquaints you with; thrusting their swords 
into one another’s sides. They were no more troubled at the death 
of thousands, than a man is to kill a fly, or a flea. Had a sense of 
this but hovered over their souls, people in many countries had not 
been made their foot-balls, and used worse than their dogs! Nor 
had the lives of millions, worth more than a world, been exposed to 
fire and sword, to support some sordid lust, or breach of faith upon 
an idle quarrel, and for the depredation of their neighbors’ estates ; 
the flames of cities had not been so bright, nor the streams of blood 
so deep, nor the cries of innocents so loud. In particular, 

(1). If God be Sovereign, all under-sovereigns are not to rule 
against him, but to be obedient to his orders. If they “rule by 
his authority” (Prov. vili. 15), they are not to rule against his in- 
terest; they are not to imagine themselves as absolute as God, and 
that their laws must be of as sovereign authority against his honor, 
as the Divine are for it. If they are his lieutenants on earth, they 
ought to act according to his orders. No man but will account a 
governor of a province a rebel, if he disobeys the orders sent to 
him by the sovereign prince that commissioned him. Rebellion 
against God is a crime of princes, as well as rebellion against princes 
a crime of subjects. Saul is charged with it by Samuel in a high 
manner for an act of simple disobedience, though intended for the 
service of God, and the enriching his country with the spoils of the 
Amalekites, “ Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft” (1 Sam. xv. 23); 
like witchcraft or covenanting with the devil, acting as if he had 

t Austin. 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 445 


received his commission not from God, but ffom Satan. Magis- 
trates, as commissioned by God, ought to act for him. Doth human 
authority ever give a commission to any to rebel against itself? did 
God ever depute any earthly sovereignty against his glory, and give 
them leave to outlaw his laws, to introduce their own? No; 
when he gave the vicarious dominion to Christ, he calls upon the 
kings of the earth to be instructed, and be wise, and “kiss the Son” 
(Ps. ii. 10, 12), 2. e to observe his orders, and pay him homage as 
their Governor. What a silly doltish thing is it to resist that Su- 
preme Authority, to which the archangels submit themselves, and 
regulate their employments punctually by their instructions! ‘l'hose 
excellent creatures exactly obey him in all the acts of their subor- 
dinate government in the world; those in whose hand the greatest 
monarch is no more than a silly fly between the fingers of a giant. 
A contradiction to the interest of God hath been fatal to kings. 
The four monarchies have had their wings clipped, and most of 
them have been buried in their own ashes; they have all, like the 
imitators of Lucifer’s pride, fallen from the heaven of their glory to 
the depth of their shame and misery. All governors are bound to 
be as much obedient to God, as their subjects are bound to be sub- 
missive to them. ‘Their authority over men is limited; God’s au- 
thority over them is absolute and unbounded. Though every soul 
ought to be subject to the higher powers, yet there is a higher 
Power of all, to which those higher powers are to subject them- 
selves; they are to be keepers of both the tables of the law of God, 
and are then most sovereigns when they set in their own practice 
an example of obedience to God, for their subjects to write after. 
(2.) They ought to imitate God in the exercise of their sovereignty 
in ways of justice and righteousness. Though God be an absolute 
sovereign, yet his government is not tyrannical, but managed accord. 
ing to the rules of righteousness, wisdom, and goodness. If God, 
that created them as well as their subjects, doth so exercise his gov- 
ernment, it is a duty incumbent upon them to do the same; since 
they are not the creators of their people, but the conductors. As 
God’s government tends to the good of the world, so ought theirs to 
the good of their countries. God committed not the government of 
the world to the Mediator in an unlimited way, but for the good of 
the church, in order to the eternal salvation of his people. * He gave 
him to be head over all things to the church” (Eph. 1. 22). He had 
power over the devils to restrain them in their temptation and malice ; 
power over the angels to order their ministry for the heirs of salva- 
tion. So power is given to magistrates for the civil preservation of 
the world and of human society; they ought therefore to consider 
for what ends they were placed over the rest of mankind, and not 
exercise their authority in a licentious way, but conformable to that 
justice and righteousness wherein God doth administer his govern- 
ment, and for the preservation of those who are committed to them. 
(3.) Magistrates must then be obeyed when they act according to 
God’s order, and within the bounds of the Divine commission, They 
are no friends to the sovereignty of God, that are enemies to magis 
tracy, his ordinance. Saul was a good governor, though none of the 


446 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


best men, and the despisers of his government after God’s choice, 
were the sons of Belial (1 Sam. x. 27). Christ was no enemy to 
Cesar. To pull down a faithful magistrate, such an one as Zerub- 
babel, is to pluck a signet from the hand of God; for in that capacity 
he accounts him (Hag. ii. 23). God’s servants stand or fall to their 
own Master; how doth he check Aaron and Miriam for speaking 
against Moses, his servant? ‘“ Were you not afraid to speak against 
my servant Moses?” (Numb. xii. 8); against Moses as related to you 
in the capacity of a governor; against Moses as related to you in the 
capacity of my servant? ‘To speak anything against them, as they 
act by God’s order, is an invasion of God’s sovereign right, who gave 
them their commission. To act against just power, or the justice of 
an earthly power, is to act against God’s ordinance, who ordained 
them in the world, but not any abuse, or ill use of their power. 

Use Il. How dreadful is the consideration of this doctrine to all 
rebels against God! Can any man that hath brains in his head, im- 
agine it an inconsiderable thing to despise the Sovereign of the world? 
It was the sole crime of disobedience to that positive law, whereby 
God would have a visible memorial of his sovereignty preserved in 
the eye of man, that showered down that deluge of misery, under 
which the world groans to this day. God had given Adam a soul, 
whereby he might live as a rational creature; and then gives him a 
law, whereby he might live as a dutiful subject: for God forbidding 
him to eat-of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, 
declared his own supremacy over Adam, and his propriety in the 
pleasant world he had given him by his bounty; he let him know 
hereby, that man was not his own lord, nor was to live after his own 
sentiments, but the directions of a superior. As when a great lord 
builds a magnificent palace, and brings in another to inhabit it, he 
reserves a small duty to himself, not of an equal value with the 
house, but for an acknowledgment of his own right, that the tenant 
may know he is not the lord of it, but hath this grant by the liber- 
ality of anothers God hereby gave Adam matter for a pure obedi- 
ence, that had no foundation in his own nature by any implanted 
law; he was only in it to respect the will of his Sovereign, and to 
understand that he was to live under the power of a higher than him- 
self. There was no more moral evil in the eating of this fruit, as 
considered distinct from the command, than in eating of any other 
fruit in the garden: had there been no prohibition, he might with as 
much safety have fed upon it as upon any other. No law of nature 
was transgressed in the act of eating of it, but the sovereignty of God 
over him was denied by him; and for this the death threatened was 
inflicted on his posterity: for though divines take notice of other 
sins in the fall of Adam, yet God, in his trial, chargeth him with 
none but this, and doth put upon his question an emphasis of his 
own authority: ‘‘ Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded 
ye that thou shouldst not eat?” (Gen. iii. 11). This T am pleased 
with, that thou shouldest disown my dominion over thyself, and this 
garden. ‘This was the inlet to all the other sins: asthe acknowledg- 
ment of God’s sovereignty is the first step to the practice of all the 

* Chrysost. in Gen. Hom. 16. 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 447 


duties of a creature, so the disowning his sovereignty is the first 
spring of all the extravagances of acreature. Every sin against the 
sovereign Lawgiver is worthy of death: the transgression of this 
command deserved death, and procured it to spread. itself over the 
face of the world. God’s dominion cannot be despised without merit- 
ing the greatest punishment. . 

1. Punishment necessarily follows upon the doctrine of sovereign- 
ty. Itis a faint and a feeble sovereignty that cannot preserve itself, 
and vindicate its own wrongs against rebellious subjects ; the height 
of God’s dominion infers a vengeance on the contemners of it: if 
God be an eternal King, he is an eternal J udge. Since sin unlinks 
the dependence between God the Sovereign, and man the subject, if 
God did not vindicate the rights of his sovereignty, and the authority 
of his law, he would seem to despise his own dominion, be weary of 
it, and not act the part of a good governor. But God is tender of 
his prerogative, and doth most bestir himself when men exalt them- 
selves proudly against him: “In the thing wherein they dealt 
proudly, he will be above them” (Exod. xviii. 11). When Pharaoh 
thought himself a mate for God, and proudly rejected his commands, 
as if they had been the messages of some petty Arabian lord, God 
rights his own authority upon the life of his enemy by the ministry 
of the Red Sea. He turned a great king into a beast, to make him 
know that the Most High ruled in the kingdoms of men: “ The 
demand is by the word of the holy ones, to the intent that the living 
may know that the Most High ruleth+in the kingdoms of men” 
(Dan. iv, 16, 17); and that by the petitions of the angels, who can- 
not endure that the empire of God should be obscured and diminish- 
ed by the pride of man. Besides the tender respect he hath to his 
own glory, he is constantly presented with the solicitations of the 
angels to punish the proud ones of the earth, that darken the glory 
of his majesty: it is necessary for the rescue of his honor, and neces- 
sary for the satisfaction of his illustrious attendants, who would think 
it 2 shame to them to serve a Lord that were always unconcerned in 
the rebellions of his creatures, and tamely suffer their spurns at his 
throne; and therefore there is a day wherein the haughtiness of man 
shall be bowed down, the cedars of Lebanon overthrown, and high 
mountains levelled, that ‘God may be exalted in that day” (Isa. ii. 
11, 12), &e. Pride is a sin that immediately swells against God’s 
authority ; this shall be brought down that God may be exalted ; 
not that he should have a real exaltation, as if he were actually de- 
posed from his government, but that he shall be manifested to be the 
Sovereign of the whole world. It is necessary there should be a day 
to chase away those clouds that are upon his throne, that the lustre 
of his majesty may break forth to the confusion of all the children 
of pride that vaunt against him. God hath a dominion over us as a 
Lawegiver, as we are his creatures ; and a dominion over us in a way 
of justice, as we are his criminals. 

2. This punishment is unavoidable. 

(1.) None can escape him. He hath the sole authority over hell 
and death, the keys of both are in his hand: the greatest Cesar can 
no more escape him than the meanest peasant: “Who art thou, O 


’ 


448 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


great mountain, before Zerubbabel ?” (Zech. iv. 7). The height of 
angels is no match for him, much less that of the mortal grandees of 
the world; they can no more resist him than the meanest person ; 
but are rather, as the highest steeples, the fittest marks for his crush- 
ing thunder. If he speaks the word, the principalities of men come 
down, and “the crown of their glory” (Jer. xiii. 18). He can “take 
the mighty away in a moment,” and that “without hands,” 2. e. 
without instruments (Job, xxxi.v 20). The strongest are like the 
feet of Nebuchadnezzar’s image, iron and clay; iron to man, but clay 
to God, to be crumbled to nothing. 

(2.) What comfort can be reaped from a creature, when the Sover- 
eign of the world arms himself with terrors, and begins his visitation ? 
“ What will you do in the day of visitation, to whom will you flee 
for help, and where will you leave your glory?” (Isa. x. 3). The 
torments from a subject may be relieved by the prince, but where 
can there be an appeal from the Sovereign of the world? Where is 
there any above him to control him, if he will overthrow us?) Who 
is there to call him to account, and say to him, What dost thou? 
He works by an uncontrollable authority; he needs not ask leave 
of any; “he works, and none can let it” (Isa. xliti. 18): as when he 
will relieve, none can afflict ; so when he will wound, none can re- 
heve. Ifa king appoint the punishment of a rebel, the greatest 
favorite in the court cannot speak a comfortable word to him: the 
most beloved angel in heaven cannot sweeten and ease the spirit of 
a man that the Sovereign Power is set against to make the butt of 
his wrath. The devils lie under his sentence, and wear their chains 
as marks of their condemnation, without hope of ever having them 
filed off, since they are laid upon them by the authority of an unac- 
countable Sovereign. 

(3.) By his sovereign authority God can make any creature the 
instrument of his vengeance. He hath all the creatures at his beck, 
and can commission any of them to be a dreadful scourge. Strong 
winds and tempests fulfil his word (Ps. exlviii. 8); the lightnings 
answer him at his call, and cry aloud, ‘Here are we” (Job, xxxXvili. 
30). By his sovereign authority he can render locusts as mischievous 
as lions, forge the meanest creatures into swords and arrows, and 
commission the most despicable to be his executioners. He can cut 
off joy from our spirits, and make our own hearts be our tormentors, 
our most confident friends our persecutors, our nearest relations to 
be his avengers; they are more his, who is their Sovereign, than 
ours, who place a vain confidence in them. Rather than Abraham 
shall want children, he can raise up stones, and adopt them into his 
family ; and rather than not execute his vengeance, he can array the 
stones in the streets, and make them his armed subjects against us. 
If he speak the word, a hair shall drop from our heads to choke us, 
or a vapor, congealed into rheum in our heads, shall drop down and 
putrefy our vitals. He can never want weapons, who is Sovereign 
over the thunders of heaven and stones of the earth, over every 
creature ; and can, by a sovereign word, turn our greatest comforts 
into curses. 

3. This punishment must be terrible. How doth David, a great 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 449 


king, sound in his body, prosperous in his crown, and successful in 
his conquests, settled in all his royal conveniences, groan under the 
wrathful touch of a greater King than himself (Ps. vi. xxxviii., and 
his other penitential Psalms), not being able to give himself a writ 
of ease by all the delights of his palace and kingdom! “ If the wrath 
of a king be as the roaring of a lion” (Prov. xix. 10) to a poor sub- 
ject, how great is the wrath of the King of kings, that cannot be set 
forth by the terror of all the amazing volleys of thunder that have 
been since the creation, if the noise of all were gathered into one 
single crack! As there is an inconceivable ground of joy in the 
special favor of so mighty a King, so is there of terror in his severe 
displeasure: he is “terrible to the kings of the earth; with God is 
terrible majesty” (Ps. Ixxvi. 12). What a folly is it, then, to rebel 
against so mighty a Sovereign ! 

Use III. Of comfort. The throne of God drops honey and sweet- 
ness, as well as*dread and terror; all his other attributes afford little 
relief without this of his dominion and universal command. When, 
therefore, he speaks of his being the God of his people, he doth often 
preface it with ‘the Lord thy God;” his sovereignty, as a Lord, be- 
ing the ground of all the comfort we can take in his federal relation 
as our God; thy God, but superior to thee; thy God, not as thy cat- 
tle and goods are thine, in a way of sole propriety, but a Lord too, 
in a way of sovereignty, not only oyer thee, but over all things else 
for thee. As the end of God’s settling earthly governments was for 
the good of the communities over which the governors preside, so 
God exerciseth his government for the good of the world, and more 
particularly for the good of the church, over which he is a peculiar 
Governor. 

1. His love to his people is as great as his sovereignty over them. 
He stands not upon his dominion with his people so much as upon 
his affection to them; he would not be called “‘ Baali, my Lord,” 2. e. 
he would not be known only by the name of sovereignty, but “ Ishi, 
my husband,” a name of authority and sweetness together (Hos. ii. 
16, 19, &c.): he signifies that he is not only the Lord of our spirits 
and bodies, but a husband by a marriage knot, admitting us to a 
nearness to him, and communion of goods with him. Though he 
majestically sits upon a high throne, yet it is a throne “ encircled 
with a rainbow” (Hzek. 1. 28), to show that his government of his 
people is not only in a way of absolute dominion, but also in a way 
of federal relation; he seems to own himself their subject rather than 
their Sovereign, when he gives them a charter to command him in 
the affairs of his church (Isa. xlv. 11); ‘‘ Ask of me things to come 
concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hands command 
you me.” Some read it by way of question, as a corrective of a 
sauciness: Do you ask me of things to come, and seem to command 
me concerning the works of my hands, as if you were more careful 
of my interest among my people than I am, who have formed them ? 
But if this were the sense, it would seem to discourage an Importu- 
nity of prayer for public deliverance; and therefore, to take it ac- 
cording to our translation, it is an exhortation to prayer, and a 
mighty encouragement in the management and exercise of it. Urge 

VOL. I1.—29 


450 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


me with my promise, in a way of humble importunity, and you shall 
find me as willing to perform my word, and gratify your desires, as 
if I were rather under your authority, than you under mine: as much 
as to say, If I be not as good as my word, to satisfy those desires 
that are according to my promise, implead me at my own throne, 
and, if I be failing in it, 1 will give judgment against myself: almost 
like princes’ charters, and gracious grants, ‘We grant such a thing 
against us and our heirs,” giving the subject power to implead them 
if they be not punctually observed by them. How is the love of 
God seen in his condescension below the majesty of earthy governors! 
He that might command, by the absoluteness of his authority, doth 
not only do that, but entreats, in the quality of a subject, as if he had 
not a fulness to supply us, but needed something from us for a sup- 
ply of himself (2 Cor. v. 20): ‘As though God did beseech you by 
us.” And when he may challenge, as a due by the right of his pro- 
priety, what we bestow upon his poor, which are his subjects as well 
as ours, he reckons it as a loan to him, as if what we had were more 
our own than his(Proy. xix. 17). He stands not upon his dominion 
so much with us, when he finds us conscientious in paying the duty 
we owe to him ; he rules as a Father, by love as well as by authority ; 
he enters into a peculiar communion with poor earthly worms, plants 
his gracious tabernacle among the troops of sinners, instructs us by 
his word, invites us by his benefits, admits us into his presence, 1s 
more desirous to bestow his smiles than we to receive them, and acts 
~ in such a manner as if he were willing to resign his sceptre into the 
hands of any that were possessed with more love and kindness to us 
than himself: this is the comfort of believers. 

9. In his being Sovereign, his pardons carry in them a full secu- 
rity. He that hath the keys of hell and death, pardons the crime, 
and wipes off the guilt. Who can repeal the act of the chief Gover- 
nor? what tribunal can null the decrees of an absolute throne? (Isa. 
xliii. 25), “I, even I, am he that blots out thy transgressions, for my 
name’s sake.” His sovereign dominion renders his mercy comforta- 
ble. The clemency of a subject, though never so great, cannot par- 
don; people may pity a criminal, while the executioner tortures him, 
and strips him of his life; but the clemency of the Supreme Prince 
establisheth a pardon. Since we are under the dominion of God, if 
he pardons, who can reverse it? if he doth not, what will the par- 
dons of men profit us in regard of an eternal state? If God be a 
King forever, then he whom God forgives, he in whom God reigns, 
shall live forever; else he would want subjects on earth, and have 
none of his lower creatures, which he formed upon the earth, to 
reign over after the dissolution of the world; if his pardons did not 
stand secure, he would, after this life, have no voluntary subjects 
that had formerly a being upon the earth; he would be a King only 
over the damned creatures. 

3. Corruptions will certainly be subdued in his voluntary subjects. 
The covenant, “I will be your God,” implies protection, govern- 
ment, and relief, which are all grounded upon sovereignty ; that, 
therefore, which is our greatest burden, will be removed by his sov- 
ereign power (Mic. vii. 19): “ He will subdue our iniquities.” If the 


@N GOD’S DOMINION. 451 


outward enemies of the church shall not bear up against his domin- 
ion, and perpetuate their rebellions unpunished, those within, his 
people, shall as little bear up against his throne, without being de- 
stroyed by him; the billows of our own hearts, and the raging waves 
within us, are as much at his beck as those without us; and his sov- 
ereignty is more eminent in quelling the corruptions of the heart, 
than the commotions of the world in reigning over men’s spirits, by 
changing them, or curbing them, more than over men’s bodies, by 

inching and punishing them. The remainders of Satan’s empire 
will moulder away before him, since He that isin us is a greater 
Sovereign ‘‘than he that is in the world” (1 John, iv. 4). His ene- 
mies will be laid at his feet, and so never shall prevail against him, 
when his kingdom shall come. He could not be Lord of any man, 
as a happy creature, if he did not, by his power, make them happy; 
and he could not make them happy, unless, by his grace, he made 
them holy: he could not. be praised, as a Lord of glory, if he did 
not make some creatures glorious to praise him; and an earthly 
creature could not praise him perfectly, unless he had every grain 
of enmity to his glory taken out of his heart. Since God is the only 
Sovereign, he only can still the commotions in our spirits, and pull 
down ali the ensigns of the devil’s royalty; he can waste him by the 
powerful word of his lips. 

4. Hence is a strong encouragement for prayer. ‘My King,” was 
the strong compellation David used in prayer, as an argument of 
comfort and confidence, as well as that of “my God” (Ps. v. 2): 
“Hearken to the voice of my cry, my King and my God.” ‘To be 
a king is to have an office of government and protection: he gives 
us liberty to approach to him as the “ Judge of all” (Heb. xii. 23), 
2.€. as the Governor of the world ; we pray to one that hath the whole 
globe of heaven and earth in his hand, and can do whatsoever he 
will: though he be higher than the cherubims, and transcendently 
above all in majesty, yet we may soar up to him with the wings of 
our soul, faith and love, and lay open our cause, and find him as 
gracious as if he were the meanest subject on earth, rather than the 
most sovereign God in heaven. He hath as much of tenderness as 
he hath of authority, and is pleased with prayer, which is an ac- 
knowledgment of his dominion, an honoring of that which he de- 
lights to honor; for prayer, in the notion of it, imports thus much— 
that God is the Rector of the world, that he takes notice of human 
affairs, that he is a careful, just, wise Governor, a storehouse of bless- 
ing, a fountain of goodness to the indigent, and a relief to the op- 
pressed. What have we reason to fear when the Sovereign of the 
world gives us liberty to approach to him and lay open our case ? 
that God, who is King of the whole earth, not only of a few villages 
or cities in the earth, but the whole earth ; and not only King of this 
dregey place of our dross, but of heaven, having prepared, or estab- 
lished, his throne in the most glorious place of the creation. 

5. Here is comfort in affliction. As a sovereign, he is the author 
of afflictions; as a sovereign, he can be the remover of them; he 
can command the waters of affliction to go so far and no farther. If 
he speaks the word, a disease shall depart as soon as a servant shall 


452 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


from your presence with a nod; if we are banished from one place, 
he can command a shelter for usin another; if he orders Moab, a 
nation that had no great kindness for his people, to let ‘his outcasts 
dwell with them,” they shall entertain them, and afford them sanctu- 
ary (Isa, xvi. 4). Again, God chasteneth as a “Sovereign,” but teach- 
eth as a “ Father” (Ps. xcix. 12); the exercise of his authority is not 
without an exercise of his goodness; he doth not correct for his own 
pleasure, or the creature’s torment, but for the creature’s instruction ; 
though the rod be in the hand of a sovereign, yet it is tinctured with 
the kindness of Divine bowels: he can order them as a sovereign to 
mortify our flesh, and try our faith. In the severest tempest, the 
Lord that raised the wind against us, which shattered the ship, and 
tore its rigging, can change that contrary wind for a more happy one, 
to drive us into the port. 

6. It is a comfort against the projects of the church’s adversaries 
m times of public commotions. The consideration of the Divine 
sovereignty may arm us against the threatenings of mighty ones, and 
the menaces of persecutors. God hath authority above the crowns 
of men, and a wisdom superior to the cabals of men; none can have 
a step without him; he hath a negative voice upon their counsels, a 
negative hand upon their motions; their politic resolves must stop at 
the point he hath prescribed them ; their formidable strength cannot © 
exceed the dimits he hath set them; their overreaching wisdom ex- 
pires at the breath of God: ‘There is no wisdom nor understanding 
nor counsel against the Lord” (Prov. xxi. 30); nota bullet can be 
discharged, nor a sword drawn, a wall battered, nor a person de- 
spatched out of the world, without the leave of God, by the mighti- 
est in the world. The instruments of Satan are no more free from 
his sovereign restraint than their inspirer; they cannot pull the hook 
out of their nostrils, nor cast the bridle out of their mouths; this 
Sovereign can shake the earth, rend the heavens, overthrow moun- 
tains, the most mountainous opposers of his interest. Though the 
nations rush in against his people like the rushing of many waters, 
“God shall rebuke them, they shall be chased as the chaff of the 
mountains before the wind, and like a rolling thing before the whirl-- 
wind” (Isa. xvii. 13); so doth he often burst in pieces the most mis- 
chievous designs, and conducts the oppressed to a happy port: he 
often turns the severest tempests into a calm, as well as the most 
peaceful calm into a horrible storm. How often hath a well-rigged 
ship, that seemed to spurn the sea under her feet, and beat the waves 
before her to a foam, been swallowed up into the bowels of that ele- 
ment, over whose back she rode a little before! God never comes 
to deliver his church as a governor, but in a wrathful posture (Hzek. 
xx. 83): “Surely, saith the Lord, with a mighty hand, and with an 
outstretched arm, and with fury poured out, will I rule over you ;” 
not with fury poured out upon the church, but fury poured out upon 
her enemies, as the words following evidence: the church he would 
bring out from the countries where she was scattered, and bring the 
people into the bond of the covenant. He sometimes “ cuts off the 
spirits of princes” (Ps. Ixxvi. 12), 2. e. cuts off their designs as men 
‘lo the pipes of a water-course. The hearts of all are as open to him 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 458 


as the riches of heaven, where he resides; he can slip an inclination 
into the heart of the mighty, which they dreamed not of before ; and 
if he doth not change their projects, he can make them abortive, and 
waylay them in their attempts. Laban marched with fury, but God 
put a padlock on his passion against Jacob (Gen. xxxi. 24, 29); the 
devils, which ravage men’s minds, must be still when he gives out his 
sovereign orders. This Sovereign can make his people find favor in 
the eyes of the cruel Egyptians, which had so long oppressed them 
(Exod. xi. 3); and speak a good word in the heart of Nebuchadnez- 
zar for the prophet Jeremiah, that he should order his captain to 
take him into his special protection, when he took Zedekiah away 
prisoner in chains, and “put out his eyes” (Jer. xxxix. 11). His 
people cannot want deliverance from Him who hath all the world at 
his command, when he is pleased to bestow it; he hath as many in- 
struments of deliverance as he hath creatures at his beck in heaven 
or earth, from the meanest to the highest. As he is the Lord of hosts, 
the church hath not only an interest in the strength he himself is 
possessed with, but in the strength of all the creatures that are under 
his command, in the elements below, and angels above. In those 
armies of heaven, and in the inhabitants of the earth, he doth “ what 
he will” (Dan. iv. 35); they are all in order and array at his com 
mand. ‘There are angels to employ in a fatal stroke, lice and frogs 
to quell the stubborn hearts of his enemies; he can range his thun- 
ders and lightnings, the cannon and granadoes of heaven, and the 
worms of the earth in his service; he can muzzle lions, calm the 
fury of the fire, turn his enemies’ swords into their own bowels, and 
their artillery on their own breasts; set the wind in their teeth, and 
make their chariot-wheels languish; make the sea enter a quarrel 
with them, and wrap them in its waves till it hath stifled them in its 
lap. The angels have storms, and tempests, and wars in their hands, 
but at the disposal of God; when they shall cast them out against 
the empire of antichrist (Rev. vu. 1, 2), then shall Satan be discharged 
from his throne, and no more seduce the nations; the everlasting 
gospel shall be preached, and God shall reign gloriously in Sion. 
Let us, therefore, shelter ourselves in the Divine sovereignty, regard 
God as the most high in our dangers and in our petitions. This was 
David’s resolution (Ps. lvii. 1, 2): “I will cry unto God most high ;” 
this dominion of God is the true ‘‘tower of David, wherein there are 
a thousand shields” for defence and encouragement (Cant. iv. 4). 

Use IV. If God hath an extensive dominion over the whole world, 
this ought to be often meditated on, and acknowledged by us. This 
is the universal duty of mankind. If he be the Sovereign of all, we 
should frequently think of our great Prince, and acknowledge our- 
selves his subjects, and him our Lord. God will be acknowledged 
the Lord of the whole earth; the neglect of this is the cause of the 
judgments which are sent upon the world. All the prodigies were 
to this end, that they might know, or acknowledge, that ‘God was 
the Lord” (Exod. x. 2); as God was proprietor, he demanded the 
first-born of every Jew, and the first-born of every beast; the one 
was to be redeemed, and the other sacrificed ; this was the quit rent 
they were to pay to him for their fruitful land. The first-fruits of 


454 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


the earth were ordered to be paid to him, as a homage due to the 
landlord, and an acknowledgment they held all in chief of him. The 
practice of offering first-fruits for an acknowledgment of God’s sov- 
ereignty, was among many of the heathens, and very ancient ; hence 
they dedicated some of the chief of their spoils, owning thereby the 
dominion and goodness of God, whereby they had gained the vic- 
tory; Cain owned this in offering the fruits of the earth, and it was 
his sin he owned no more, vz., his being a smner, and meriting the 
justice of God, as his brother Abel did in his bloody sacrifice. God 
was a sovereign Proprietor and Governor while man was in a state 
of innocence; but when man proved a rebel, the sovereignty of God 
bore another relation towards him, that of a Judge, added to the 
other. The first-fruits might have been offered to God in a state of 
innocence, as a homage to him as Lord of the manor of the world ; 
the design of them was to own God’s propriety in all things, and 
men’s dependence on him for the influences of heaven in producing 
the fruits of the earth, which he had ordered for their use. The de- 
sion of sacrifices, and placing beasts instead of the criminal, was to 
acknowledge their own guilt, and God as a sovereign Judge; Cain 
owned the first, but not the second; he acknowledged his depend- 
ence on God as a Proprietor, but not his obnoxiousness to God as a 
Judge; which may be probably gathered from his own speech, when 
God came to examine him, and ask him for his brother (Gen. iv. 9): 
“ Am I my brother’s keeper?” Why do youask me? though l own 
thee as the Lord of my land and goods, yet I do not think myself 
accountable to thee for all my actions. This sovereignty of God 
ought to be acknowledged in all the parts of it, im all the manifesta- 
ttons of it to the creature; we should bear a sense of this always 
upon our spirits, and be often in the thoughts of it in our retirements ; 
we should fancy that we saw God upon his throne in his royal garb, 
and great attendants about him, and take a view of it, to imprint an 
awe upon our spirits. The meditation of this would, 

1. Fix us on him as an object of trust. It is upon his sovereign 
dominion as much as upon anything, that safe and secure confidence 
is built; for if he had any superior above him to control him in his 
designs and promises, his veracity and power would be of little effi- 
cacy to form our souls to a close adherency to him. It were not fit 
to make him the object of our trust that can be gainsayed by a 
higher than himself, and had not a full authority to answer our ex- 
pectations; if we were possessed with this notion fully and believ- 
ingly, that God were high above all, that “his kingdom rules over 
all,” we should not catch at every broken reed, and stand gaping for 
comforts from a pebble stone. He that understands the authority of 
a king, would not waive a reliance on his promise to depend upon 
the breath of a changeling favorite. None but an ignorant man 
would change the security he may have upon the height of a rock, 
to expect it from the dwarfishness of a molehill. To put confidence 
in any inferior lord more than in the prince, is a folly in civil con- 
verse, but a rebellion in divine ; God only being above all, can only 
rule all; can command things to help us, and check other things 
which we depend on, and make them fall short of our expectations. 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 455 


The due consideration of this doctrine would make us pierce through 
second causes to the first, and look further than to the smaller sort 
of sailors, that climb the ropes, and dress the sails, to the pilot that 
sits at the helm, the master, that, by an indisputable authority, orders 
all their notions. We should not depend upon second causes for 
our support, but look beyond them to the authority of the Deity, 
and the dominion he hath over all the works of his hands (Zech. x. 
1): “ Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain ;” when 
the seasons of the year conspire for the producing such an effect, 
when the usual time of rain 1s wheeled about in the year, stop not 
your thoughts at the point of the heavens whence you expect it, but 
pierce the heavens, and solicit God, who must give order for it before 
it comes. The due meditation of all things depending on the Divine 
dominion would strike off our hands from all other holds, so that no 
creature would engross the dependence and trust which is due to the 
First Cause; as we do not thank the heavens when they pour out 
rain, so we are not to depend upon them when we want it; God is 
to be sought to when the womb of second causes is opened to relieve 
us, as well as when the womb of second causes is barren, and brings 
not forth its wonted progeny. 

2. If would make us diligent in worship. The consideration of 
God, as the Supreme Lord, is the foundation of all religion: “Our 
Father, which art in heaven,” prefaceth the Lord’s prayer; ‘‘ Father” 
is a name of authority ; ‘‘in heaven,” the place where he hath fixed his 
throne, notes his government; not “my Father,” but “ our Father,” 
notes the extent of this authority. In all worship we acknowledge 
the object of our worship our Lord, and ourselves his vassals; if we 
bear a sense that he is our Sovereign King, it would draw us to him 
in every exigence, and keep us with him im a reverential posture, in 
every address; when we come, we should be careful not to violate 
his right, but render him the homage due to his royalty. We should 
not appear before him with empty souls, but filled with holy 
thoughts: we should bring him the best of our flock, and present 
him with the prime of our strength; were we sensible we hold all 
of him, we should not withhold anything from him which is more 
worthy than another. Our hearts would be framed into an awful 
regard of him, when we consider that glorious and “ fearful name, 
the Lord our God” (Deut. xxvii. 58). We should look to our feet 
when we enter into his house; if we considered him in heaven upon 
his throne, and ourselves on earth at his footstool (Hccles. v. 2), 
lower before him than a worm before an angel, it would hinder gar- 
nishness and lightness. The Jews, saith Capel, on 1 Tim. i. 17, re- 
peat this expression, n>3m 452, King of worlds, or Eternal King ; 
probably the first original of it might be to stake them down from 
wandering. When we consider the majesty of God, clothed with a 
robe of light, sitting upon his high throne, adorned with his royal 
ensigns, we should not enter into the presence of so great a Majesty 
with the sacrifice of fools, with light motions and foolish thoughts, 
as if he were one of our companions to be drolled with. We should 
not hear his word as if it were the voice of some ordinary peasant. 
The consideration of majesty would engender reverence in our ser- 


456 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


vice; it would also make us speak of God with honor and respect, 
as of a great and glorious king, and not use defaming expressions of 
him, as if he were an infamous being. And were he considered as 
a terrible majesty, he would not be frequently solicited by some to 
pronounce a damnation upon them upon every occasion. 

8. It would make us charitable to others. Since he is our Lord, 

the great Proprietor of the world, it is fit he should have a part of 
our goods, as well as our time: he being the Lord both of our goods 
and time. The Lord is to be honored with our substance (Prov. ni. 
9); kings were not to be approached to without a present; tribute 
is due to kings: but because he hath no need of any from us to 
bear up his state, maintain the charge of his wars, or pay his mil- 
tary officers and hosts, it isa debt due to him to acknowledge him in 
his poor, to sustain those that are a part of his substance; though he 
stands in no need of it himself, yet the poor, that we have always 
with us, do; as a seventh part of our weekly time, so some part of 
our weekly gains, are due to him. There was to be a weekly laying 
by in store somewhat of what God had prospered them, for the re- 
lief of others (1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2); the quantity 1s not determined, that 
‘is left to every mag’s conscience, “according as God hath prospered 
him” that week. TP we did consider God as the Donor and Pro- 
prietor, we should dispose of his gifts according to the design of the 
true owner, and act in our places as stewards entrusted by him, and 
not purse up his part, as well as our own, in our coffers. We should 
not deny him a small quit rent, as an acknowledgement that we 
have a greater income from him; we should be ready to give the 
inconsiderable pittance he doth require of us, as an acknowledgment 
of his propriety, as well as liberality. 

4, It would make us watchful, and arm us against all temptations. 
Had Eve stuck to her first argument against the serpent, she had not 
been instrumental to that destruction which mankind yet feél the 
smart of (Gen. iii. 8): ‘‘ God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it;” the 
great Governor of the world hath laid his sovereign command upon 
us in this point. The temptation gained no ground till her heart let 
go the sense of this for the pleasure of her eye and palate. The re- 
petition of this, the great Lord of the world hath said or ordered, 
had both unargumented and disarmed the tempter. A sense of 
God’s dominion over us would discourage a temptation, and put it 
out of countenance; it would bring us with a vigorous strength to 
beat it back to a retreat. If this were as strongly urged as the 
temptation, it would make the heart of the tempted strong, and the 
motion of the tempter feeble. 

5. It would make us entertain afflictions as they ought to be en- 
tertained, viz., with a respect to God. When men make light of 
any affliction from God, it is a contempt of his sovereignty, as to 
contemn the frown, displeasure, and check of a prince, is an affront 
to majesty: itis asif they did not care a straw what God did with 
them, but dare him to do his worst. There is a “‘despising the 
chastening of the Almighty” (Job, v. 17). To be unhumbled under 
his hand, is as much, or more, affront to him, than to be impatient 
under it. Afflictions must be entertained as a check from heaven, 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 457 


as a frown from the great Monarch of the world; under the feeling 
of every stroke, we are to acknowledge his sovereignty and bounty ; 
to despise it, is to make light of his authority over us; as to despise 
his favors is to make light of his kindness to us. A sense of God’s 
dominion would make us observe every check from him, and not 
diminish his authority by casting off a due sense of his correction. 

6. This dominion of God would make us resign up ourselves to 
God in everything. He that considers himself a thing made by 
God, a vassal under his authority, would not expostulate with him, 
and call him to an account why he hath dealt so or so with him. It 
would stab the vitals of all pleas against him. We should not then 
contest with him, but humbly lay our cause at his feet, and say 
with Eli, (1 Sam. i. 18), “It is the Lord, let him do what seems 
good.” We should not commence a suit against God, when he doth 
not answer our prayers presently, and send the mercy we want upon 
the wings of the wind; he is the Lord, the Sovereign. The consid- 
eration of this would put an end to our quarrels with God; should 
I expect that the Monarch of the world should wait upon me; or 
I, a poor worm, wait upon him? Must I take state upon me be- 
fore the throne of heaven, and expect the King: of kings should 
lay by his sceptre, to gratify my humor? Surely Jonah thought 
God no more than his fellow, or his vassal, at that time when he 
told him to his face he did well to be angry, as though God might 
not do what he pleased with so small a thing as a gourd; he 
speaks as if he would have sealed a lease of ejectment, to exclude 
him from any propriety in anything in the world. 

7. This dominion of God would stop our vain curiosity. When 
Peter was desirous to know the fate of John, the beloved disciple, 
Christ answereth no more than this: (John, xx1.22), “If I will that 
he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me.” Con- 
sider your duty, and lay aside your curiosity, since it is my pleasure 
not to reveal ‘it. The sense of God’s absolute dominion would 
silence many vain disputes in the world. What if God will not re- 
veal this or that? the manner and method of his resolves should 
humble the creature under intruding inquiries. 

Use V. Of exhortation. 

1. The doctrine of the dominion of God may teach us humility. 
We are never truly abased, but by the consideration of the emi- 
nence and excellency of the Deity. Job never thought himself so 
pitiful a thing, so despicable a creature, as after God’s magnificent 
declamation upon the theme of his own sovereignty (Job, xlu. 5, 6). 
When God’s name is regarded as the most excellent and sovereign 
name in all the earth, then is the soul in the fittest temper to lie 
low, and cry out, What is man, that so great a Majesty should be 
mindful of him? When Abraham considers God as the supreme 
Judge of all the earth, he then owns “himself but dust and ashes” 
(Gen. xvii. 25, 27). Indeed, how can vile and dusty man vaunt 
before God, when angels, far more excellent creatures, cannot stand 
before him, but with a veil on their faces? How little a thing is 
man in regard of all the earth! How mean a thing is the earth in 
regard of the vaster heavens! How poor a thing is the whole 


458 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


world in comparison of God! How pitiful a thing is man, if com- 
pared with so excellent a Majesty! There is as great a distance be- 
tween God and man, as between being and not being; and the more 
man considers the Divine royalty, the more disesteem he will have 
of himself; it would make him stoop and disrobe himself, and fall 
low before the throne of the King of kings, throwing down before 
his throne any crown he gloried in (Rev. 1v. 10). 

(1). In regard of authority. How unreasonable is pride in the 
presence of majesty! How foolish is it for a country justice of 
peace to think himself as great as his prince that commissioned him ! 
How unreasonable is pride in the presence of the greatest sov- 
ereignty! What, is human greatness before Divine? ‘The stars 
discover no light when the sun appears, but in a humble posture 
withdraw in their lesser beams, to give the sole glory of enlighten- 
ing the world to the sun, who 1s, as it were, the sovereign of those 
stars, and imparts a light unto them. The greatest prince is in- 
finitely less, if compared with God, than the meanest scullion in his 
kitchen can be before him. As the wisdom, goodness, and holiness 
of a man is a mere mote compared to the goodness and holiness of 
God, so is the authority of a man a mere trifle in regard of the 
sovereignty of God: and who but a simple child would be proud 
of a mote or trifle? Let man be as great as he can, and command 
others, he is still a subject to One greater than himself. Pride would 
then vanish like smoke at the serious consideration of this sov- 
ereignty. One of the kings of this country did very handsomely 
shame the flattery of his courtiers, that cried him up as lord of sea 
and land, by ordering his chair to be set on the sand of the sea 
shore, when the tide was coming in, and commanding the waters 
not to touch his feet, which when they did without any regard to 
his authority, he took occasion thereby to put his flatterers out of 
countenance, and instruct himself in a lesson of humility. “See,” 
saith he, “how I rule all things, when so mean a thing as the water 
will not obey me!” It is a ridiculous pride that the Turk and 
Persian discover in their swelling titles. What poor sovereigns are 
they, that cannot command a cloud, give out an effectual order for 
a drop of rain, in a time of drought, or cause the bottles of heaven 
to turn their mouth another way in a time of too much moisture ! 
Yet their own prerogatives are so much in their minds, that they 
jostle out all thoughts of the supreme prerogative of God, and give 
thereby occasion to frequent rebellions against him. 

(2). In regard of propriety. And this doctrine is no less an 
abatement of pride in the highest, as well as in the meanest; it 
lowers pride in point of propriety, as well as in point of authority. 
Is any proud of his possessions? how many lords of those posses- 
sions have gone before you! how many are to follow you!* Your 
dominion lasts but a short time, too short to be a cause of any 
pride and glory in it. God by a sovereign power can take you 
from them, or them from you, when he pleaseth. The traveller re- 
fresheth himself in the heat of summer under a shady tree; how 
many have done so before him the same day he knows not, and 

x Raynard, de Deo, p. 766. 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. 459 


how many will have the benefit after before night comes, he is as 
much ignorant of; he, and the others that went before him and 
follow after him, use it for their refreshment, but none of them can 
say, that they are the lords of it; the property is invested in some 
other person, whom perhaps they know not. The propriety of all 
you have is in God, not truly im yourselves. Doth not that man 
deserve scorn from you, who will play the proud fool in gay clothes 
and attire, which are known to be none of his own, but borrowed ? 
Is it not the same case with every proud man, though he hath a 
property in his goods by the law of the land? Is anything you 
have your own truly? Is it not lent you by the great Lord? Is 
it not the same vanity in any of you, to be proud of what you have 
as God’s loan to you, as for such a one to be proud of what he hath 
borrowed of man? And do you not make yourselves as ridiculous 
to angels and good men, who know that though it is yours in op- 
position to man, yet it is not yours in opposition to God? they are 
granted you only for your use, as the collar of esses and sword, 
and other ensigns of the chief magistrate in the city, pass through 
many hands in regard of the use of them, but the propriety remains 
in the community and body of the city: or as the silver plate of a 
person that invites you to a feast is for your use during the time 
of the invitation. What ground is there to be proud of those things 
you are not the absolute lords and proprietors of, but only have 
the use of them granted to you during the pleasure of the Soy- 
ereign of the world! . 

2. Praise and thankfulness result from this doctrine of the sov- 
ereignty of God. 

(1). He is to be praised for his royalty. (Ps. cxlv. 1), “I will ex- 
toll thee, my God, O King.” The Psalmist calls upon men five 
times to sing praise to him as King of all the earth. (Ps. xlvii. 
6, 7), “Sing praises to God, sing praises: sing praises to our king, 
sing praises: for God is the King of all the earth; sing ye praises 
with understanding.” All creatures, even the inanimate ones, are 
called upon to praise him because of the excellency of his name 
and the supremacy of his glory, in the 148th Psalm throughout, 
and ver. 13. That Sovereign Power that gave us hearts and 
tongues, deserves to have them employed in his praises, especially 
since he hath by the same hand given us so great matter for it. As 
he is a Sovereign we owe him thankfulness; he doth not deal with 
us in a way of absolute dominion; he might then have annihilated 
us, since he hath as full a dominion to reduce us to nothing. Con- 
sider the absoluteness of his sovereignty in itself, and you must 
needs acknowledge that he might have multiplied precepts, enjoined 
us the observance of more than he hath done; he might have made 
our tether much shorter; he might exact obedience, and promise 
no reward for it; he might dash us against the walls, as a potter 
doth his vessel, and no man have any just reason to say, What dost 
thou? or, Why dost thou use me so? A greater right is in him to 
use us in such a manner as we do sensible as well as insensible 
things. And if you consider his dominion as it is capable to be ex- 
ercised in a way of unquestionable justice, and submitted to the 


460 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


reason and judgments of creatures, he might have dealt with us in 
a smarter way than he hath hitherto done ; instead of one affliction, 
we might have had a thousand: he might have shut his own hands 
from pouring out any good upon us, and ordered innumerable 
scourges to be prepared for us; but he deals not with us according 
to the rights of his dominion. He doth not oppress us by the great- 
ness of his majesty; he enters into covenant with us, and allures us 
by the chords of a man, and shows himself as much a merciful as 
an absolute Sovereign. 

(2.) As he is a Proprietor, we owe him thankfulness. He is at his 
own choice whether he will bestow upon us any blessings or no; the 
more value, therefore, his benefits deserve from us, and the Donor 
the more sincere returns. If we have anything from the creature to 
serve our turn, it is by the order of the chief Proprietor. He is the 
spring of honor, and the fountain of supplies: all creatures are but 
as the conduit pipes in a great city, which serve several houses with 
water, but from the great spring. All things are conveyed originally 
from his own hand, and are dispensed from his exchequer. If this 

great Sovereign did not order them, you would have no more sup- 
plies from a creature than you could have nourishment from a chip: 
‘tis the Divine will in everything that doth us good; every favor 
from creatures is but a smile from God, an evidence of his royalty 
to move us to pay a respect to him as the great Lord. Some hea- 
ihens had so much respect for God, as to conclude that his will, and 
not their prudence, was the chief conductor of their affairs. His 
goodness to us calls for our thankfulness, but his sovereignty calls 
for a higher elevation of it: smile from a prince is more valued, 
and thought worthy of more gratitude, than a present from a peasant, 
a small gift from a great person is more gratefully to be received 
than a larger from an inferior person: the condescension of royalty 
magnifies the gift. What is man, that thou, so great a Majesty, art 
mindful of him, to bestow this or that favor upon him ?-—is but a 
due reflection upon every blessing we receive. Upon every fresh 
blessing we should acknowledge the Donor and true Proprietor, and 
give him the honor of his dominion : his property ought to be thank- 
fully owned in everything we are capable of consecrating to him ; as 
David, after the liberal collection he had made for the building of 
the temple, owns in his dedication of it to that use the propriety of 
God: “Who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able 
to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of thee, and 
of thine own have we given thee” (1 Chron. xxix. 14): it was but a 
return of God’s own to him, as the waters of the river are no other 
than the return to the sea of what was taken from it. Praise and 
thankfulness is a rent due from all mankind, and from every crea- 
ture, to the great Landlord, since all are tenants, and hold by him 
at his will. “Every creature in heaven and earth, and under the 
earth, and in the sea,” were heard, by John, to ascribe ‘ blessing, 
honor, glory, and power, to Him that sits on the throne” (Rev. v. 13). 
We are as much bound to the sovereignty of God for his preserva- 
tion of us, as for his creation of us; we are no less obliged to him 
that preserves our beings when exposed to dangers, than we are for 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 461 
bestowing a being upon us when we were not capable of danger. 
Thankfulness is due to this Sovereign for public concerns. Hath 
he not preserved the ship of his church in the midst of whistling 
winds and roaring waves; in the midst of the combats of men and 
devils; and rescued it often when it hath been near shipwrecked? 

8. How should we be induced from hence to promote the honor 
of this Sovereign! We should advance him as supreme, and all our 
actions should concur in his honor: we should return to his glory 
what we have received from his sovereignty, and enjoy by his mercy: 
he that is the superior of all, ought to be the end of all. This is the 
harmony of the creation; that which is of an inferior nature is or- 
dered to the service of that which is of a more excellent nature; 
thus water and earth, that have a lower being, are employed for the 
honor and beauty of the plants of the earth, who are more excellent 
in having a principle of a growing life: these plants are again sub- 
servient to the beasts and birds, which exceed them in a principle 
of sense, which the others want: those beasts and birds are ordered 
for the good of man, who is superior to them in a principle of reason, 
and is invested with a dominion over them. Man having God for 
his superior, ought as much to serve the glory of God, as other 
things are designed to be useful to man. Other governments are 
intended for the good of the community, the chief end is not the 
good of the governors themselves: but God being every way sover- 
eign, the sovereign Being, giving being to all things, the sovereign 
Ruler, giving order and preservation to all things, is also the end 
of all things, to whose glory and honor all things, all creatures, are 
to be subservient; ‘‘for of him, and through him, and to him, are 
all things, to whom be glory for ever” (Rom. x1. 86): of him, as the 
eflicient cause; through him, as the preserving cause; ¢o him, as the 
final cause. All our actions and thoughts ought to be addressed to 
his glory; our whole beings ought to be consecrated to his honor, 
though we should have no reward but the honor of having been 
subservient to the end of our creation: so much doth the excellency 
and majesty of God, infinitely elevated above us, challenge of us. 
Subjects use to value the safety, honor, and satisfaction of a good 
prince above their own: David is accounted worth ten thousand of 
the people; and some of his courtiers thought themselves obliged to 
venture their lives for his satisfaction in so mean a thing as a little 
water from the well of Bethlehem. Doth not so great, so good a 
Sovereign as God, deserve the same affection from us? ‘Do we 
swear,” saith a heathen, “to prefer none before Cesar, and have we 
not greater reason to prefer none before God?”y It is a justice due 
from us to God to maintain his glory, as it is a justice to preserve 
the right and property of another. As God would lay aside his 
Deity if he did deny himself, so a creature acts irregularly, and out 
of the rank of a creature, if it doth not deny itself for God. He that 
makes himself his own end, makes himself his own sovereign. 'l'o 
napkin up a gift he hath bestowed upon us, or to employ what we 
possess solely to our own glory, to use anything barely for ourselves, 
without respect to God, is to apply it to a wrong use, and to injure 


¥ Arrian in Epictet. 


462 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


God in his propriety, and the end of his donation. What we have 
ought to be used for the honor of God: he retains the dominion and 
lordship, though he grants us the use: we are but stewards, not pro- 
prietors, in regard to God, who expects an account from us, how 
we have employed his goods to his honor. The kingdom of God is 
to be advanced by us: we are to pray that his kingdom may come: 
we are to endeavor that his kingdom may come, that is, that God 
may be known to be the chief Sovereign; that his dominion, which 
was obscured by Adam’s fall, may be more manifested; that his sub- 
jects, which are suppressed in the world, may be supported; his 
laws, which are violated by the rebellions of men, may be more 
obeyed; and his enemies be fully subdued by his final judgment, the 
last’ evidence of his dominion in this state of the world; that the 
empire of sin and the devil may be abolished, and the kingdom of 
God perfected, that none may rule but the great and rightful Sover- 
eign. Thus while we endeavor to advance the honor of his throne, we 
shall not want an honor to ourselves. He is too gracious a Sovereign 
to neglect them that are mindful of his glory; “those that honor 
him, he will honor” (1 Sam. ii. 30). 

4. Fear and reverence of God in himself, and in his actions, is a 
duty incumbent on us from this doctrine (Jer. x. 7): “ Who would 
not fear thee, O King of nations?” The ingratitude of the world is 
taxed in not reverencing God as a great king, who had given so 
many marks of his royal government among them. The prophet 
wonders there was no fear of so great a King in the world, since, 
“among all the wise men of the nations, and among all their kings, 
there is none like unto this;” no more reverence of him, since none 
ruled so wisely, nor any ruled so graciously. The dominion of God 
is one of the first sparks that gives fire to religion and worship, con- 
sidered with the goodness of this Sovereign (Ps. xii. 27, 28): “ All 
the nations shall worship before thee, for the kingdom is the Lord's, 
and he is Governor among the nations.” Epicurus, who thought 
God careless of human affairs, leaving them at hap-hazard, to the 
conduct of men’s wisdom and mutability of fortune, yet acknowl- 
edged that God ought to be worshipped by man for the excellency 
of his nature, and the greatness of his majesty. How should we 
reverence that God, that hath a throne encompassed with such glo- 
rious creatures as angels, whose faces we are not able to behold, 
though shadowed in assumed bodies! how should we fear the Lord 
of Hosts, that hath so many armies at his command in the heavens 
above, and in the earth below, whom he can dispose to the exact 
obedience of his will! how should men be afraid to censure any of 
his actions, to sit judge of their Judge, and call him to an account at 
their bar! how should such an earth-worm, a mean animal as man, 
be afraid to speak irreverently of so great a King among his pots 
and strumpets! Not to fear him, not to reverence him, is to pull 
his throne from under him, and make him of a lower authority than 
ourselves, or any creature that we reverence more. 

5. Prayer to God, and trust in him, is inferred from his sovereign- 
ty. Ifhe be the supreme Sovereign, holding heaven and carth in 
his hand, disposing all things here below, not committing every thing 


ON GOD’S DOMINION. | 4638 


to the influence of the stars or the humors of men, we ought, then, 
to apply ourselves to him in every case, implore the exercise of his 
authority ; we hereby own his peculiar right over all things and per- 
sons. He only is the supreme Head in all causes, and over all per- 
sons: “Thine is the kingdom” (Matt. vi. 18), concludes the Lord’s 
prayer, both as a motive to pray, and a ground to expect what we 
want. He that believes not God’s government will think it needless 
to call upon him, will expect no refuge under him in a strait, but 
make some creature-reed his support. If we do not seek to him, 
but rely upon the dominion we have over our own possessions, or 
upon the authority of anything else, we disown his supremacy and 
dominion over all things; we have as good an opinion of ourselves, 
or of some creatures, as we ought to have of God; we think our- 
selves, or some natural cause we seek to or depend upon, as much 
sovereigns as he, and that all things which concern us are as much 
at the dispose of an inferior, as of the great Lord. It is, indeed, to 
make a god of ourselves, or of the creature; when we seek to him, 
upon all occasions, we own this Divine eminency, we acknowledge 
that it is by him men’s hearts are ordered, the world governed, all 
things disposed ; and God, that is jealous of his glory, 1s best pleas- 
ed with any duty in the creature that doth acknowledge and desire 
the glorification of it, which prayer and dependence on him doth 
in a special manner, desiring the exercise of his authority, and the 
preservation of it in ordering the affairs of the world. 

6. Obedience naturally results from this doctrine. As his justice 
requires fear, his goodness thankfulness, his faithfulness trust, his 
truth belief, so his sovereignty, in the nature of it, demands obe- 
dience: as it is most fit he should rule, in regard of his excellency, 
so it is most fit we should obey him in regard of his authority: he 
is our Lord, and we his subjects; he is our Master, and we his ser- 
vants; it is righteous we should observe him, and conform to his 
will: he is everything that speaks an authority to command us, and 
that can challenge an humility in us to obey. As that is the truest 
doctrine that subjects us most to God, so he is the truest Christian 
that doth, in his practice, most acknowledge this subjection; and as 
sovereignty is the first notion a creature can have of God, so obe- 
dience is the first and chief thing conscience reflects upon the crea- 
ture. Man holds all of God; and therefore owes all the operations 
capable to be produced by those faculties to that Sovereign Power 
that endowed him with them. Man had no being but from him; he 
hath no motion without him; he should, therefore, haye no being 
but for him; and no motion but according to him: to call him 
Lord, and not to act in subjection to him, is to mock and put a scorn 
upon him (Luke vi. 46): “Why call you me Lord, Lord, and do 
not the things that I say?” It is like the crucifying Christ un- 
der the title of a King. It is not by professions, but by observ- 
ance of the laws of a prince, that we manifest a due respect to 
him: by that we reverence that authority that enacted them, and 
the prudence that framed them. 

This doctrine affords us motives to obey, and directs us to the 
manner of obedience. 


464 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


Ist. Motives to obey, 

(1.) It is comely and orderly. Is it not a more becoming thing to 
be ruled by the will of our Sovereign than by that of our lusts ?— 
to observe a wise and gracious Authority, than to set up inordinate 
appetites in the room of his law? Would not all men account it a 
disorder to be abominated, to see a slave or vassal control the just 
orders of his lord, and endeavor to subject his master’s will to his 
own? much more to expect God should serve our humor rather 
than we be regulated by his will. It is more orderly that subjects 
should obey their governors, than governors their subjects; that 
passion should obey reason, than reason obey passion. When good 
governors are to conform to subjects, and reason veil to passion, itis 
monstrous! the one disturbs the order of a community, and the 
other defaceth the beauty of the soul. Is it a comely thing for God 
to stoop to our meanness, or for us to stoop to his greatness? 

(2.) In regard of the Divine sovereignty, it is both honorable and 
advantageous to obey God. It is, indeed, the glory of a superior to 
be obeyed by his inferior; but where the sovereign is of transcend- 
_ ent excellency and dignity, itis an honor to a mean person to be 
under his immediate commands, and enrolled in his service. It is 
more honor to be God’s subject than to be the greatest worldly 
monarch; his very service is an empire, and disobedience to him 1s 
aslavery. Itisa part of his sovereignty to reward any service 
done him.? Other lords may be willing to recompense the service of 
their subjects, but are often rendered unable; but nothing can stand 
in the way of God to hinder your reward, if nothing stand in your 
way to hinder your obedience (Lev. xvii. 5): “If you keep my 
statutes, you shall live in them; I am the Lord.” Isthere anything 
in the world can recompense you for rebellion against God, and obe- 
dience to a lust? Saul cools the hearts of his servants from running 
after David, by David’s inability to give them fields and vineyards 
(1 Sam. xxi. 7): “ Will the son of Jesse give every one of you 
fields and vineyards, and make you captains of thousands, and cap- 
tains of hundreds, that you have conspired against me?” But God 
hath a dominion to requite, as well as an authority to command 
your obedience ; he is a great Sovereign, to bear you out in your 
observance of his precepts against all reproaches and violence of 
men, and at last to crown you with eternal honor. If he should 
neglect vindicating, one time or other, your loyalty to him, he 
will neglect the maintainmmg and vindicating his own sovereignty 
and greatness. | 

(3.) God, in all his dispensations to man, was careful to preserve 
the rights of his sovereignty in exacting obedience of his creature. 
The second thing he manifested his sovereignty in was that of a 
Lawgiver to Adam, after that of a Proprietor in giving him the pos- 
session of the garden; one followed immediately the other (Gen. it. 
15, 16): “The Lord God took the man, and put him into the gar- 
den of Eden, to dress it; and the Lord God commanded the man, 
saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat, but of 
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it,” 


z Servire, Deo regnare est. 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 465 


&c. Nothing was to be enjoyed by man but upon the condition of 
obedience to his Lord; and it is observed that in the description of 
the creation, God is not called “ Lord” till the finishing of the crea- 
tion, and particularly in the forming of man. ‘‘ And the Lord God 
formed man” (Gen. 1. 7). ‘Though he was Lord of all creatures, yet 
it was in man he would have his sovereignty particularly manifest- 
ed, and by man have his authority specially acknowledged. The 
law is prefaced with this title: “I am the Lord thy God” (Exod. 
xx. 2): authority in Lord, sweetness in God, the one to enjoin, the 
other to allure obedience; and God enforceth several of the com- 
mands with the same title. And as he begins many precepts with 
it, so he concludes them with the same title, ‘‘ I am the Lord,” Lev. 
xix. 87, and in other places. In all his communications of his good- 
ness to man in ways of blessing them, he stands upon the preserva- 
tion of the rights of his sovereignty, and manifests his graciousness 
in favor of his authority. ‘I am the Lord your God,” your God in 
all my perfections for your advantage, but yet your Sovereign for 
your obedience. In all his condescension he will have the rights of 
this untouched and unviolated by us. When Christ would give the 
most pregnant instance of his condescending and humble kindness, 
he urgeth his authority to ballast their spirits from any presumptu- 
ous eruptions because of his humility. “ You call me Master, and 
Lord; and you say well: for so I am” (John, xin, 18). He asserts 
his authority, and presseth them to their duty, when he had seemed 
to lay it by for the demeanor of a servant, and had, below the dig- 
nity of a master, put on the humility of a mean underling, to wash 
the disciples feet; all which was to oblige them to perform the com- 
mand he then gave them (ver. 14), and in obedience to his author- 
ity, and imitation of his example. 

(4.) All creatures obey him. All creatures punctually observe 
the law he hath imprinted on their nature, and in their several capa- 
cities acknowledge him their Sovereign; they move according to the 
inclinations he imprinted on them. The sea contains itself in its 
bounds, and the sun steps out of its sphere; the stars march in their 
order, ‘‘ they continue this day according to thy ordinance, for all 
are thy servants” (Ps. cxix. 91). If he orders things contrary to their 
primitive nature, they obey him. When he speaks the word, the 
devouring fire becomes gentle, and toucheth not a hair of the 
children he will preserve; the hunger-starved lions suspend their 
ravenous nature, when so good a morsel as Daniel is set before them ; 
and the sun, which had been in perpetual motion since its creation, 
obeys the writ of ease God sent it in Joshua’s time, and stands still. 
Shall insensible and sensible creatures be punctual to his orders, pas- 
sively acknowledge his authority? shall lions and serpents obey 
God in their places?—and shall not man, who can, by reason, argue 
out the sovereignty of God, and understand the sense and goodness 
of his laws, and actively obey God with that will he hath enriched 
him with above other creatures? Yet the truth 1s, every sensitive, 
yea, every senseless creature, obeys God more than his rational, more 
than his gracious creatures in this world. The rational creatures 
since the fall have a prevailing principle of corruption. Let the obe- 

VOL. 11.—30 


466 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


dience of other creatures incite us more to imitate them, and shame 
our remissness in not acknowledging the dominion of God, in the 
just way he prescribes us to walk in. Well then, let us not pretend 
to own God as our Lord, and yet act the part of rebels; let us give 
him the reverence, and pay him that obedience, which of right be- 
longs to so great a King. Whatsoever he speaks as a true God, 
ought to be believed; whatsoever he orders as a sovereign God, 
ought to be obeyed; let not God have less than man, nor man have 
more than God. It is a common principle writ upon the reason of 
all men, that respect and observance is due to the majesty of a man, 
much more to the Majesty of God as a Lawgiver. 

9d. As this doctrine presents us motives, so it directs us to the 
manner and kind of our obedience to God. . 

(1.) It must be with a respect to his authority. As the veracity 
of God is the formal object of faith, and the reason why we believe 
the things he hath revealed; so the authority of God is the formal 
object of our obedience, or the reason why we observe the things he 
hath commanded. There must be a respect to his will as the rule, 
as well as to his glory as the end. It is not formally obedience that 
is not done with regard to the order of God, though it may be ma- 
terially obedience, as it answers the matter of the precept. As when 
men will abstain from excess and rioting, because it 1s ruinous to 
their health, not because it is forbidden by the great Lawgiver; this 
is to pay a respect to our own conveniency and interest, not a con- 
scientious observance to God; a regard to our health, not to our 
Sovereign ; a kindness to ourselves, not a justice due to the rights 
of God. There must not only be a consideration of the matter of the 
precept as convenient, but a consideration of the authority of the 
Lawgiver as obligatory. ‘Thus saith the Lord,” ushers in every 
order of his, directing our eye to the authority enacting it; Jero- 
boam did God’s will of prophecy in taking the kingdom of Israel; 
and the devils may be subservient in God’s will or providence; but 
neither of them are put upon the account of obedience, because not. 
done intentionally with any conscience of the sovereignty of God. 
God will have this owned by a regular respect to it; so much he insists 
upon the honor of it, that the sacrifice of Christ, God-man, was 
most agreeable to him, not only as it was great and admirable in it- 
self, but also for that ravishing obedience to his will, which was the 
life and glory of his sacrifice, whereby the justice of God was not 
only owned in the offering, but the sovereignty of God owned in the 
obedience. ‘He became obedient unto death ; wherefore God highly 
exalted him” (Phil. 11. 8), 

(2.) It must be the best and most exact obedience. The most 
sovereign authority calls for the exactest and lowest observance ; the 
highest Lord for the deepest homage; being, he is, a ‘‘ great King, 
he must have the best in our flock” (Mal. i. 14). Obedience is due 
to God, as King, and the choicest obedience is due to him, as he is 
the most excellent King. The more majestic and noble any man is, 
the more careful we are in our manner of service to him. We are 
bound to obey God, not only under the title of a “ Lord” in regard 
of jurisdiction and political subjection, but under the title of a true 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 467 


“Lord and Master,” in regard of propriety ; since we are not onl 
his subjects but his servants, the exactest obedience is due to God, 
jure servitutis ; “‘ When you have done all, say you are unprofitable 
servants” (Luke, xvii. 10), because we can do nothing which we owe 
not to God. 

(3.) Sincere and inward obedience. As itis a part of his sover- 
eignty to prescribe laws not only to man in his outward state, but 
to his conscience, so it is a part of our subjection to receive his laws 
into our will and heart. The authority of his laws exceeds human 
laws in the extent and*riches of them, and our acknowledgment of 
his sovereignty cannot be right, but by subjecting the faculties of our 
soul to the Lawgiver of our souls; we else acknowledge his au- 
thority to be as limited as the empire of man; when his will not 
only sways the outward action, but the inward motion, it is a giving 
him the honor of his high throne above the throne of mortals. ‘The 
right of God ought to be preserved undamaged in affection, as well 
as action. 

(4.) It must be sole obedience. We are ordered to serve him only ; 
“Him only shalt thou serve” (Matt. iv. 10): as the only Supreme 
Lord, as being the highest Sovereign, it is fit he should have the 
highest obedience before all earthly sovereigns, and as being unpar- 
alleled by any among all the nations, so none must have an obe- 
dience equal to him. When God commands, if the highest power 
on earth countermands it, the precept of God must be preferred be- 
fore the countermand of the creature. ‘“ Whether it be right in the 
sight of God, to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye” 
(Acts, iv. 18, 19). We must never give place to the authority of all 
the monarchs in the world, to the prejudice of that obedience we owe 
to the Supreme Monarch of heaven and earth; this would be to 
place the throne of God at the footstool of man, and debase him 
below the rank of a creature. Loyalty to man can never recompense 
for the mischief accruing from disloyalty to God. All the obedience 
we are to give to man, is to be paid in obedience to God, and with 
an eye to his precept: therefore, what servants do for their masters, 
they must do “as to the Lord” (Col. iii. 28); and children are to 
obey their parents “in the Lord” (Eph. vi. 1). The authority of 
God is to be eyed in all the services payable to man; proper and 
- true obedience hath God solely for its principal and primary object; 
all obedience to man that interferes with that, and would justle out 
obedience to God, is to be refused. What obedience is due to man, 
is but rendered as a part of obedienceto God, and a stooping of his 
authority. 

(5.) It must be universal obedience. The laws of man are not to 
be universally obeyed ; some may be oppressing and unjust : no man 
hath authority to make an unjust law, and no subject is bound to 
obey an unrighteous law; but God being a righteous Sovereign, 
there is not one of his laws but doth necessarily oblige us to obe- 
dience. Whatsoever this Supreme Power declares to be his will, it 
must be our care to observe; man, being his creature, is bound to 
be subject to whatsoever laws he doth impose to the meanest as well 
as to the greatest: they having equally .a stamp of Divine authority 


468 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


upon them. We are not to pick and choose among his precepts: 
this is to pare away part of his authority, and render him a half sov- 
ereion. It must be universal in all places. An Hnglishman in 
Spain is bound to obey the laws of that country wherein he resides: 
and so not responsible there for the breach of the laws of his native 
country. In the same condition is a Spaniard in England. But the 
laws of God are to be obeyed in every part of the world; whereso- 
ever Divine Providence doth cast us, it casts us not out of the places 
where he commands, nor out of the compass of his ownempire. He 
is Lord of the world, and his laws oblige in every part of the world; 
they were ordered for a world, and not for a particular climate and 
territory. 

(6.) It must be indisputable obedience. All authority requires 
readiness in the subject; the centurion had it from his soldiers; they 
went when he ordered them, and came when he beckoned to them 
(Matt. viii. 9). It is more fit God should have the same promptness 
from his subjects. We are to obey his orders, though our purblind 
understanding may not apprehend the reason of every one of them. 
It is without dispute that he is sovereign, and therefore it is without 
dispute that we are bound to obey him, without controlling his 
conduct. A master will not bear it from his slave, why should 
God from his creature? Though God admits his creatures some- 
times to treat with him about the equality of his justice, and 
also about the reason of some commands, yet sometimes he gives no 
other reason but his own sovereignty, “Thus saith the Lord ;” to 
correct the malapertness of men, and exact from them an entire obe- 
dience to his unlimited and absolute authority. When Abraham was 
commanded to offer Isaac, God acquaints him not with the reason 
of his demand till after (Gen. xxii. 2, 12), nor did Abraham enter 
any demur to the order, or expostulate with God, either from his 
own natural affection to Isaac, the hardness of the command, it being, 
as it were, a ripping up of his own bowels, nor the quickness of it 
after he had been a child of the promise, and a Divine donation above 
the course of nature. Nor did Paul confer with flesh and blood, 
and study arguments from nature and interest to oppose the Divine 
command, when he was sent upon his apostolical employment (Gal. 
i. 16). The more indisputable his right is to command, the stronger is 
our obligation to obey, without questioning the reason of his orders. 

(7.) It must be joyful obedience. Men are commonly more cheer 
ful in their obedience to a great prince than to a mean peasant; be- 
cause the quality of the master renders the service more honorable. 
It is a discredit to a prince’s government, when his subjects obey 
him with discontent and dejectedness, as though he were a hard 
master, and his laws tyrannical and unrighteous. When we pay 
obedience but with a dull and feeble pace, and a sour and sad tem- 
per, we blemish our great Sovereign, imply his commands to be 
erievous, void of that peace and pleasure he proclaims to be in them ; 
that he deserves no respect from us, if we obey him because we 
must, and not because we will. Involuntary obedience deserves not 
the title: it is rather submission than obedience, an act of the body, 
not of the mind: a mite of obedience with cheerfulness, is better 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 469 


than a talent without it. In the little Paul did, he comforts himself 
in this, that with the ‘‘ mind he served the law of God” (Rom. vu. 
25); the testimonies of God were David’s delight (Ps. exix. 24). Our 
understandings must take pleasure in knowing him, our wills de- 
lightfully embrace him, and our actions be cheerfully squared to 
him. This credits the sovereignty of God in the world, makes 
others believe him to be a gracious Lord, and move them to have 
some veneration for his authority. 

(8.) It must be a perpetual obedience. As man is a subject as 
soon as he is a creature, so he is a subject as long as he is a creature. 
God’s sovereignty is of perpetual duration, as long as he is God; 
man’s obedience must be perpetual, while he isa man. God cannot 
part with his sovereignty, and a creature cannot be exempted from 
subjection ; we must not only serve him, but cleave to him (Deut. 
xiii. 4), Obedience is continued in heaven, his throne is established 
in heaven, it must be bowed to in heaven, as well as in earth. The 
angels continually fulfil his pleasure. 

7. Ewhortation. Patience is a duty flowing from this doctrine. In 
all strokes upon ourselves, or thick showers upon the church, “‘the 
Lord reigns,” is a consideration to prevent muttering against him, 
and make us quietly wait to see what the issue of his Divine 
pleasure will be. It is too great an insolence against the Divine 
Majesty to censure what he acts, or quarrel with him for what 
he inflicts. Proud clay doth very unbecomingly swell against an 
infinite superior: If God be our Sovereign, we ought to subscribe 
to his afflicting will without debates, as well as to his liberal will 
with affectionate applauses. We should be as full of patience 
under his sharper, as of praise under his more grateful, dispen- 
gations, and be without reluctancy against his penal, as well as his 
preceptive, pleasure. It is God’s part to inflict, and the creature's 
part to submit. 

This doctrine affords us motives, and shows us the nature of pa- 
tience. 1. Motives to it. 

(1.) God, being Sovereign, hath an absolute right to dispose of 
all things. His title to our persons and possessions is, upon this ac- 
count, stronger than our own can be; we have as much reason to be 
angry with ourselves, when we assert our worldly right against 
others, as to be angry with God for asserting the right of his domin- 
ion over us. Why should we enter a charge against him, because 
he hath not tempered us so strong in our bodies, drawn us with as 
fair colors, embellished our spirits with as rich gifts as others? Is 
he not the Sovereign of his own goods, to impart what, and in what 
measure, he pleaseth ? Would you be content your servants should 
check your pleasure in dispensing your own favors? It is an un- 
reasonable thing not to leave God to the exercise of his own domin- 
ion. Though Job were a pattern of patience, yet he had deep tinc- 
tures of impatience ; he often complains of God’s usage of him as 
too hard, and stands much upon his own integrity; but when God 
comes, in the latter chapters of that book, to justify his carriage to- 
wards him, he chargeth him not as a criminal, but considers him 
only as his vassal. He might have found flaws enough in Job’s car- 


tide. ™ BE et ae 
470 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


riage, and corruption enough in Job’s nature, to clear the equity of 
his proceeding as a judge; but he useth no other medium to con- 
vince him, but the greatness of his Majesty, the unlimitedness of 
his sovereignty, which so appals the good man, that he puts his 
finger on his mouth and stands mute with a self-abhorrency before 
him, as a Sovereign, rather than as a Judge. When he doth pinch 
us, and deprive us of what we most affect, his right to do it should 
silence our lips and calm our hearts from any boisterous uproars 
against him. 

(2.) The property of all still remains in God, since he is sovereign. 
He did not divest himself of the property when he granted us the use ; 
the earth is his, not ours; the fulness any of us have, as well as the 
fulness others have. After he had given the Israelites corn, wine, 
and oil, he calls them all his, and emphatically adds my, to every 
one of them (Hos. 1. 9). His right is universal over every mite we 
have, and perpetual too; he may, therefore, take from us what he 
please. He did but deposit in our hands for awhile the benefits we 
enjoy, either children, friends, estate, or lives; he did not make a 
_total conveyance of them, and alienate his own property, when he 

ut them into our hands; we can show no patent for them, wherein 
the full right is passed over to us, to hold them against his will and 
pleasure, and implead him if he offer to re-assume them: he re- 
served a power to dispossess us upon a forfeiture, as he is the Lord 
and Governor. Did any of us yet answer the condition of his grant? 
it was his indulgence to allow them so long; there is reason to sub- 
mit to him, when he re-assumes what he lent us, and rather to thank 
him that he lent it so long, and did not seize upon it sooner. 

(8.) Other things have more reason to complain of our sover- 
eignty over them, than we of God’s exercise of his sovereignty 
over us. Do we not exercise an authority over our beasts, as to 
strike them when we please, and merely for our pleasure; and 
think we merit no reproof for it, beeause they are our own, and 
of a nature inferior to ours? And shall not God, who is abso- 
lute, do as much with us, who are more below him than the mean- 
est creatures are below us? They are creatures as well as we, and 
we no more creatures than they ; they were framed by Omnipotence 
as well as we; there is no more difference between them and us in 
the notion of creatures. As there is no difference between the great- 
est monarch on earth, and the meanest beggar on the dunghill, in 
the notion of a man; the beggar is a man, as well as the monarch, 
and as much a man; the difference consists in the special endow- 
ments we have above them by the bounty of their and our common 
Creator. We are less, if compared with God, than the worst, mean- 
est, and most sordid creature can be, if compared with us. Hath not 
a bird or a hare (if they had a capacity) more reason to complain of 
men’s persecuting them by their hawks and their dogs? but would 
their complaints appear reasonable, since both were made for the use 
of man, and man doth but use the nature of the one to attain a 
benefit by the other? Have we any reason to complain of God if 
he lets loose other creatures, the devouring hounds of the world, to 
bite and afflict us? We must not open our lips against him, nor 


ON GOD'S DOMINION. 471 


let our heart swell against his scourge, since both they and we 
were made for his use, as well as other creatures for our; this 1s a 
reason to stifle all complaints against God, but not to make us care- 
less of preventing afflictions, or emerging out of them by all just 
ways. The hare hath a nature to shift for itself by its winding and 
turning, and the bird by its flight; and neither of them could be 
blamed, if they were able, should the one scratch out the eyes of the 
hounds, and the other sacrifice the hawk to its own fury. 

(4.) It is a folly not to submit to him. Why should we strive 
against him, since he is an unaccountable Sovereign, and “ gives no 
account of any of his matters?” (Job, xxxiu. 18.) Who can dis 
annul the judgment God gives? There is no appeal from the su- 
premé court; a higher court can repeal or null the sentence of an 
inferior court, but the sentence of the highest stands irreversible, but 
by itself and its own authority. It is better to lower our sails, than 
to grapple with one that can shoot us under water ; to submit to that 
Sovereign whom we cannot subdue. 

9. It shows us the true nature of patience in regard of God: it is 
a submission to God’s sovereignty. As the formal object of obe- 
dience is the authority of God enacting the law, so the formal object 
of patience is the authority of God inflicting the punishment : as his 
right of commanding is to be eyed in the one, so his right of punish- 
ing is to be considered in the other. This was Eh’s condition, when 
he had received a message that might put flesh and blood into a 
mutiny, the rending the priesthood from his family, and the ruin of 
his house: yet this consideration, “It is the Lord,” calms him into 
submission, and a willing compliance with the Divine pleasure da 
Sam. iii. 18): “It is the Lord, let him do what seems good in his 
sight.” Job was of the same strain (Job, 1. 21): “ The Lord gives, 
and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of the Lord ;” 
he considers God as a sovereign, who was not to be reproached, or 
have anything uncomely uttered of him, for what he had done. To 
be patient because we cannot avoid it, or resist it, is a violent, not a 
loyal patience ; but to submit because it is the will of God to inflict ; 
to be silent, because the sovereignty of God doth order it, is a pa- 
tience of a true complexion. The other kind of patience is no other 
than that of an enemy that will free himself as soon as he can, and 
by any way, though never so violent, that offers itself. This sort of 
patience is that of a subject acknowledging the supreme authority 
over him, and that he ought to be ordered by the will, and to the 
_ glory of God, more than by his own will, and for his own ease; “I 
was dumb, I opened not my mouth” (Ps. xxxix. 10); not because I 
could not help it, but “because thou didst it,” thou who art my 
sovereign Lord. The greatness of God claims an awful and invio- 
lable respect from his creatures in what way soever he doth dispose 
of them; this is due to him; since his kingdom ruleth over all, his 
kingdom should be acknowledged by all, and his royal authority 
submitted to in all that he doth. 


DISCOURSE XIV, 


ONWOO D' SP Ak LENCE: 


Nanum, 1. 3.—The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at all acquit 
the wicked: the Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the clouds 
are the dust of his feet. 


THE subject of this prophecy is God’s sentence against Nineveh, 
the head and metropolis of the Assyrian empire: a city famous for 
its strength, and thickness of its walls, and the multitude of its 
towers for defence against an enemy. The forces of this empire did 
God use as a scourge against the Israelites, and by their hands ruined 
Samaria, the chief city of the ten tribes, and transplanted them as 
captives into another country (2 Kings, xvii. 5, 6), about six years 
after Hezekiah came to the crown of Judah (2 Kings, xviii. compared 
with chap. xvii. 6), in whose time, or, as some think, later, Nahum 
uttered this prophecy. The name, Nahum, signifies Comforter ; 
though the matter of his prophecy be dreadful to Nineveh, it was 
comfortable to the people of God: for a promise is made, (ver. 7), 
‘The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble; and he 
knoweth them that trust in him.” And an encouragement to Judah, 
to keep their solemn feasts, (ver. 15: and also in chap. ii. 3), with 
a declaration of the misery of Nineveh, and the destruction of it. 
Observe, | 

1. In all the fears of God’s people, God will have a Comforter for 
them. Judah might well be dejected with the calamity of their 
brethren, not knowing but it might be their own turn shortly after. 
They knew not where the ambition of the Assyrian would stop; 
but God by his prophets calms their fears of their furious neighbor, 
by predicting to them the ruin of their feared adversary. 

2. ‘The destruction of the church’s enemies is the comfort of the 
church. By that God is glorified in his justice, and the church se- 
cured im its worship. ) 

3. Phe victories of persecutors secure them not from being the 
triumphs of others. The Assyrians that conquered and captived 
Israel, were themselves to be conquered and captived by the 
Medes. The whole oppressing empire is threatened with destruction 
in the ruin of their chief city ; accordingly it was accomplished, and 
the empire extinguished by a greater power. God burns the rod 
when it hath done the work he appointed it for; and the wisp of 
straw wherewith the vessels are scoured, is flung into the fire, or 
upon the dunghill. Ne | 

Nahum begins his prophecy majestically, with a description of the 


ON GOD’S PATIENCE. 473 


wrath and fury of God. (Ver. 2), ‘God is jealous, and the Lord 
revengeth ; the Lord revengeth, and is furious: the Lord will take 
vengeance on his adversaries, and reserveth wrath for his enemies.” 
And therefore the whole of it is called (ver. 1), ‘The burden of 
Nineveh,” as those prophecies are, which are composed of threaten- 
ings of judgments, which lie as a mighty weight upon the heads and 
backs of sinners. 

God is jealous—jealous of his glory and worship, and jealous for 
his people, and their security. He cannot long bear the oppressions 
of his people, and the boasts of his enemies. He is jealous for him- 
self, and is jealous for you of Judah, who retain his worship. He is 
not forgetful of those that remember him, nor of the danger of those 
that are desirous to maintain his honor in the world. In this first 
expression, the prophet uses the covenant name, God; the covenant 
runs, “Iam your God,” or “the Lord your God ;” mostly God with- 
out Lord, never Lord without God: and, therefore, his jealousy here 
is meant of the care of his people, and the relation that his actions 
against his enemies have to his servants. He is a lover of his own, 
and a revenger on his enemies. 

The Lord revengeth, and vs furious—He now describes God by a 
name of sovereignty and power, when he describes him in his wrath 
and fury, and is furious. Heb, man >v2, Lord of hot anger. God will 
vindicate his own glory, and have his right on his enemies in a way 
of punishment, if they will not give it him in a way of obedience. 
It is three times repeated, to show the certainty of the judgment ;* 
and the name of “ Lord” added to every one, to intimate the power 
wherewith the judgment should be executed. It is not a fatherly 
correction of children in a way of mercy, but an offended Sovereign's 
destruction of his enemies ina way of vengeance. ‘There is an anger 
of God with his own people, which hath more of mercy than wrath ; 
in this his rod is guided by his bowels. There is a fury of God 
against his enemies, where there is sole wrath without any tincture 
of mercy ; when his sword is all edge, without any balsam drops 
upon it. Such a fury as David deprecates (Ps. vi. 1): “O Lord, re- 
buke me not in thy anger, nor chasten me in thy sore displeasure,” 
with a fury untempered with grace, and insupportable wrath. 

He reserves wrath for his enemies.—He lays 1t up in his treasury, to 
be brought out and expendedina dueseason. ‘“ Wrath” is supplied 
by our translators, and is not inthe Hebrew. He reserves, what ?— 
that which is too sharp to be expressed, too great to be conceived: 
a vengeance itis. And si 309, He reserves it. He that hath an in- 
finite wrath, he reserves it; that hath a strength and power to exe- 
cute it. 

(Ver. 8.) The Lord is slow to anger, Heb. »px 57%, of broad nostrils. 
The anger of God is expressed by this word, which signifies ‘ nos- 
trils:” as, Job, ix. 18, “If God will not withdraw his anger,” Heb. 
“his nostrils.” And the anger whereby the wicked are consumed, ° 
is called the “ breath of nostrils” (Job, iv. 9); and when he is angry, 
smoke and fire are said to go out of his nostrils (2 Sam. i. 9); and 
in Psalm Ixxiv. 1, “ Why doth thy anger smoke?” Heb. “ Why do 


@ Ribera, in loc. 


474 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


thy nostrils smoke?” So the rage of a horse, when he is provoked 
in battle, is called the glory of his nostrils (Job, xxxix. 20). He 
breathes quick fumes, and neighs with fury. And slowness to anger 
is here expressed by the phrase of ‘“ long or wide nostrils :” because 
in a vehement anger, the blood boiling about the heart, exhales men’s 
spirit, which fume up, and break out in dilated nostrils. But where 
the passages are straighter the spirits have not so quick a vent, and 
therefore raise more motions within; or, because the wider the nos- 
trils are, the more cool air is drawn in to temper the heat of the 
heart, where the angry spirits are gathered; and so the passion is 
allayed, and sooner calmed. God speaks of himself in Scripture 
often after the rate of men; Jeremiah prays (ch. xv. 15) that God 
would not take him away in his long-suffermg, Heb. “in the length 
of his nostrils,” ¢. e. Be notslow and backward in thy anger against 
my persecutors, as to give them time and opportunity to destroy me. 
The nostrils, as well as other members of a human body, are ascribed 
to God. He is slow to anger; he hath anger in his nature, but is 
not always in the execution of it. 

And great in power—This may refer to his patience as the cause 
of it, or as a bar to the abuse of it. 

1. “He is slow to anger, and great in power,” 7. e. his power mod- 
erates his anger; he is not so impotent as to be at the command of 
his passions, as men are; he can restrain his anger under just pro- 
vocations to exercise it. His power over himself’ is the cause of his 
slowness to wrath, as Numb. xiv. 17: ‘Let the power of my Lord 
be great,” saith Moses, when he pleads for the Israelites’ pardon. 
Men that are great in the world are quick in passions, and are not so 
ready to forgive an injury, or bear with an offender, as one of a 
meaner rank. It is a want of a power over a man’s self that makes 
him do unbecoming things upon a provocation. A prince that can 
bridle his passion, is a king over himself, as well as over his subjects. 
God is slow to anger, because great in power: he hath no less power 
over himself than over his creatures: he can sustain great injuries 
without an immediate and quick revenge: he hath a power of pa- 
tience, as well as a power of justice. 

2. Or thus: “He is slow to anger and great in power.” He is 
slow to anger, but not for want of power to revenge himself; his 
power is as great to punish, as his patience to spare. It seems thus, 
that slowness to anger is brought in as an objection against the re- 
venge proclaimed. What do you tell us of vengeanée, vengeance, 
nothing but such repetitions of vengeance ?—as though we were lg- 
norant that God is slow to anger. It is true, saith the prophet, I 
acknowledge it as much as you, that God is slow to anger; but 
withal, great in power. His anger certainly succeeds his abused 
patience; he will not always bridle in his wrath, but one time or 
other let it march out in fury against his adversaries. The Assyrians, 
who had captived the ten tribes, and been victorious a little against 
the Jews, might think that the God of Israel had been conquered 
by their gods, as well as the people professing him had been sub- 
dued by their arms; that God had lost all his power; and the Jews 
might argue, from God’s patience to his enemies, against the credit 


ON GOD’S PATIENCE. 475 


of the prophet’s denouncing revenge. The prophet answers, to the 
terror of the one, and the comfort of the other, that this indulgence 
to his enemies, and not accounting with them for their crimes, pro- 
ceeded from the greatness of his patience, and not from any debility 
in his power. Asit refers to the Assyrian, it may be rendered thus: 
You Ninevites, upon your repentance after Jonah’s thundering of 
judgments, are witnesses of the slowness of God to anger, and had 
your punishments deferred ; but, falling to your old sins, you shall 
find a real punishment, and that he hath as much power to execute 
his ancient threatenings, as he had then compassion to recall them; 
his patience to you then was not for want of power to ruin you, but 
was the effect of his goodness towards you. As it refers to the 
Jews, it may be thus paraphrased : Do not despise this threatening 
against your enemies because of the greatness of their might, the 
seeming stability of their empire, and the terror they possess all the 
nations with round about them: it may be long before it comes, but 
assure yourselves the threatening I denounce shall certainly be exe- 
cuted; though he hath patience to endure them a hundred and 
thirty-five years (for so long as it was before Nineveh was destroyed 
after this threatening, as Ribera, a loc.» computes from the years of 
the reign of the kings of Judah), yet he hath also power to verify 
his word, and accomplish his will: assure yourselves, he will not at 
all acquit the wicked. 

He will not acquit the wicked—He will not always account the crim- 
inal an innocent, as he seems to do by a present sparing of them, 
and dealing with them as if they were destitute of any provoking 
carriage towards him, and he void of any resentment of it. He will 
‘not acquit the wicked ;” how is this? Who then can be saved? 
Is there no place for remission? He will ‘“ not acquit the wicked.” 
2. e. he will not acquit obstinate sinners. As he hath patience for 
the wicked, so he hath mercy for the penitent. The wicked are the 
subjects of his long-suffering, but not of his acquitting grace; he 
doth not presently punish their sins, because he is slow to anger; 
but without their repentance he will not blot out their sins, because 
he is righteous in judgment: if God should acquit them without re- 
pentance for their crimes, he must himself repent of his own law 
and righteous sanction of it. “ He will not acquit,” 2. e. he will not 
go back from the thing he hath spoken, and forbear, at long run, 
the punishment he hath threatened. 

The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind.—The way of God signifies 
sometimes the law of God, sometimes the providential operations of 
God: “Is not my way equal?” (Ezek. xviii. 25). It seems there 
to take in both. 

And in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet—The pro- 
phet describes here the fight of God with the Assyrians, as if he 
rushed upon them with a mighty noise of an army, raising the dust 
with the feet of their horses, and motion of their chariots. Symbol- 
ically, it signifies the multitude of the Chaldean and Median forces, 
invading, besieging, and storming the city. It signifies, 

1. The rule of providence. The way of God is in every motion 

> Page 359, col. 1. ¢ Tirinus, in loc. 


476 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of the creature ; he rules all things, whirlwinds, storms, and clouds; 
his way is in all their walks, in the whirlings and blusterings of the 
one, in the raising and dissolving the other. He blows up the winds, 
and compacts the clouds, to make them serviceable to his designs. 

2. The management of wars by God. His way is in the storm; 
as he was the Captain of the Assyrians against Samaria, so he will 
be the Captain of the Medes against Nineveh: as Israel was not so 
much wasted by the Assyrians as by the Lord, who levied and 
armed their forces; so Nineveh shall be subverted, rather by God, 
than by the arms of the Medes. Their force is described not to be 
so much from human power as Divine. God is President in all the 
commotions of the world, his way is in every whirlwind. 

3. The easiness of executing the judgment. He is of so great 
power that he can excite tempests in the air, and overthrow them 
with the clouds, which are the dust of his feet: he can blind his 
enemies, and avenge himself on them: he is Lord of clouds, and 
ean fill their womb with hail, lightnings, and thunders, to burst out 
upon those he kindles his anger against: he is of so great force, that 
he needs not use the strength of his arm, but the dust of his feet, to 
effect his destroying purpose. 

4. The suddenness of the judgment. Whirlwinds come suddenly, 
without any harbingers to give notice of their approach: clouds are 
swift in their motion; ‘“ Who are those that fly as a cloud ?” (Isa. Ix. 
8), 2. e. with a mighty nimbleness. What God doth, he shall do on 
the sudden, come upon them before they are aware, be too quick for 
them in his motion to overrun and overreach them. The winds are 
described with wings, in regard of the quickness of their motion. 

5. The terror of judgments. ‘The Lord hath his way in the . 
whirlwind,” 2. ¢.in great displeasure. The anger of the Lord is 
often compared to a storm; he shall bring clouds of judgments upon 
them, many and thick, as terrible as when a day is turned into night, 
by the mustering of the darkest clouds that interpose between the 
sun and the earth. ‘Clouds and darkness are round about him, and 
a fire goes before him,” when he ‘‘burns-up his enemies” (Ps. xcevil. 
2, 8). The judgments shall have terror without mercy, as clouds ob- 
scure the light, and are dark masks before the face and glory of the 
sun, and cut off its refreshing beams from the earth. Clouds note 
multitude and obscurity ; God could crush them without a whirl- 
wind, beat them to powder with one touch, but he will bring his 
judgments in the most surprising and amazing manner to flesh and 
blood, so that all their glory shall be changed into nothing but ter- 
ror, by the noise of the bellowing winds, and the clouds, like ink, 
blacking the heavens. 

6. The confusion of the offenders upon God’s proceeding. A 
whirlwind is not only a boisterous wind, that hurls and rolls every- 
thing out of its place, but, by its circular motion, by its winding to 
all points of the compass, it confounds things, and jumbles them to- 
gether. It keeps not one point, but, by a circumgyration, toucheth 
upon all. Clouds, like dust, shall be blown in their face, and gum 
up their eyes: they shall be in a posture of confusion, not know 
what counsels to take, what motions to resolve upon. Let them look 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. AUT 


to every point of heaven and earth, they shall meet with a whirl- 
wind to confound them, and cloudy dust to blind them. 

7. The irresistibleness of the judgment. Winds have more than 
a giant-like force, a torrent of compacted air, that, with an invincible 
wifulness, bears all before it, displaceth the firmest trees, and levels 
the tallest towers, and pulls up bodies from their natural place. 
Clouds also are over our heads, and above our reach; when God 
places them upon his people for defence they are an invincible se- 
curity (Isa. iv. 5); and when he moves them, as his chariot, agaist 
a people, they end in an irresistible destruction. Thus the ruin of 
the wicked is described (Prov. x. 25): “As the whirlwind passes, 
so is the wicked no more :” it blows them down, sweeps them away, 
they irrecoverably fall before the force of it. What heart can en- 
dure, and what hands can be strong, in the days wherein God doth 
deal with them! (Hzek. xxii. 14). Thus is the, judgment against 
Nineveh described: God hath his way in the whirlwind, to thunder 
down their strongest walls, which were so thick that chariots could 
march abreast upon them; and batter down their mighty towers, 
which that city had in multitudes upon their walls. 

They are the first words I intend to insist upon, to treat of the 
Patience of God described in those words, ‘The Lord is slow to 
anger.” 

Doctrine. Slowness to anger, or admirable patience, is the property 
of the Divine nature. As patience signifies suffering, so it 1s not in 
God. The Divine nature is impassible, incapable of any impair, it 
cannot be touched by the violences of men, nor the essential glory 
of it be diminished by the injuries of men ; but as it signifies a will- 
ingness to defer, and an unwillingness to pour forth his wrath upon 
sinful creatures, he moderates his provoked justice, and forbears to 
revenge the injuries he daily meets with in the world. He suffers 
no grief by men’s wronging him, but he restrains his arm from pun- 
ishing them according to their merits; and thus there is patience in 
every cross a man meets with in the world, because, though it be a 
punishment, it is less than is merited by the unrighteous rebel, and 
less than may be inflicted by a righteous and powerful God. This 
patience is seen in his providential works in the world: “ He suffered 
the nations to walk in their own way,” and the witness of his provi- 
dence to them was his “ giving them rain and fruitful seasons, filling 
their heart with food and gladness” (Acts, xvi. 17). The heathens 
took notice of it, and signified it by feigning their god Saturn, to be 
bound a whole year in a soft cord, a cord of wool, and expressed it 
by this proverb: “The mills of the gods grind slowly ;” 2. e. God 
doth not use men with that severity that they deserve; the mills 
being usually turned by criminals condemned to that work.¢ ‘This, 
in Scripture, is frequently expressed by a slowness to anger (Ps> en, 
8), sometimes by long-suffering, which is a patience with duration 
(Ps. cxlv. 8 ; Joel, ii. 18). He is slow to anger, he takes not the first 
occasions of a provocation; he is long-suffering (Rom. ix. 22), and 
(Ps. Ixxxvi. 15) he forbears punishment upon many occasions of: 
fered him. It is long before he consents to give fire to his wrath, 

4 Rhodigi. lib. vi. c. 14. 


478 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


and shoot out his thunderbolts. Sin hath a loud cry, but God seems 
to stop his ears, not to hear the clamor it raises and the charge it 
presents. He keeps his sword a long time in the sheath; one calls 
the patience of God the sheath of his sword, upon those words (Ezek. 
xxi. 8), “I will draw forth my sword out of his sheath.” This is one 
remarkable letter in the name of God; he himself proclaims it (Exod. 
xxxiv. 6): “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful, gracious, and long- 
suffering.” And Moses pleads it in the behalf of the people (Numb. 
xiv. 18), where he placeth it in the first rank; the Lord is “long- 
suffering and of great mercy :” it is the first spark of mercy, and ush- 
ers it to its exercises in the world.e In the Lord’s proclamation, it is 
put in the middle link, mercy and truth together; mercy could have 
no room to act if patience did not prepare the way ; and his truth 
and goodness, in his promise of the Redeemer, would not have been 
manifest to the world if he had shot his arrows as soon as men com- 
mitted their sins, and deserved his punishment. This perfection is 
expressed by other phrases, as “ keeping silence” (Ps. 1. 21): “These 
things hast thou done, and I kept silence,” snw sna mws mds; it 
signifies to behave one’s self as a deaf or dumb man. I did not fly 
in thy face, as some do, with a great noise upon a light provoca- 
tion, as if their life, honor, estates, were at the stake; I did not 
presently call thee to the bar, and pronounce judicial sentence upon 
theg according to the law, but demeaned myself as if I had been 
ignorant of thy crimes, and had not been invested with the power 
of judging thee for them. Chald. “I waited for thy conversion.” 
God’s patience is the silence of his justice, and the first whisper of 
hismercy. It is also expressed by not laying folly to men (Job, xxiv. 
12); men groan under the oppressions of others, yet God lays not 
folly to them, 2. e. to the oppressors; God suffers them to go on with 
impunity. He doth not deliver his people because he would try 
them, and takes not revenge upon the unrighteous, because in pa- 
tience he doth bear with them : patience is the life of his providence 
in this world. He chargeth not men with their crimes here, but re- 
serves them, upon impenitency, for another trial. This attribute is 
so great a one, that it is signally called by the name of “ Perfection” 
(Matt. v. 45, 48). He had been speaking of Divine goodness, and 
patience to evil men, and he concludes, “ Be you perfect,” &c., im- 
plying it to be an amazing perfection of the Divine nature, and wor- 
thy of imitation. 

In the prosecution of this, I. Let us consider the nature of this pa- 
tience. IJ. Wherein it is manifested. III. Why God doth exercise 
so much patience. IV. The Use. 

I. The nature of this patience. 

1. It is part of the Divine goodness and mercy, yet differs from 
both. God being the greatest goodness, hath the greatest mildness. 
Mildness is always the companion of true goodness, and the greater 
the goodness the greater the mildness. Who so holy as Christ, and 
who so meek? God’s slowness to anger is a branch or slip from his 
mercy (Ps. cxlv. 8): “The Lord is full of compassion, slow to anger” 

© AjAov dé drt éyyetpidsov THY Tyuwpiar Karel, KoAéov O& TovTEoTL THY OnKyY TOV ey yverpLSiou 
uakpoOvuiav dvoualer. Theodoret, in loc. 


ON GOD’S PATIENCE. 479 


It differs from mercy in the formal consideration of the object; mercy 
respects the creature as miserable, patience respects the creature as 
criminal; mercy pities him in his misery, and patience bears with 
the sin which engendered that misery, and is giving birth to more. 
Again, mercy is one end of patience ; his long-suffering is partly to 
glorify his grace: so it was im Paul (1 Tim. 1. 16). As slowness to 
anger springs from goodness, so it makes mercy the butt and mark 
of its operations (Isa. xxx. 18): ‘He waits that he may be gracious.” 
Goodness sets God upon the exercise of patience, and patience sets 
many a sinner on running into the arms of mercy. That mercy 
which makes God ready to embrace returning sinners, makes him 
willing to bear with them in their sins, and wait their return. It 
differs also from goodness, in regard of the object. ‘The object of 
goodness is every creature, angels, men, all inferior creatures, to the 
lowest worm that crawls upon the ground. The object of patience 
is, primarily, man, and secondarily, those creatures that respect men’s 
support, conveniency, and delight; but they are not the objects of 
patience, as considered in themselves, but in relation to man, for 
whose use they were created; and therefore God's patience tu them 


is properly his patience with man. The lower creatures do not in- 
jure God, and therefore are not the objects of his patience, but as 
they are forfeited by man, and man deserves to be deprived of them ; 
as man in this regard falls under the patience of God, so do those 
creatures which are designed for man’s good. That patience which 
spares man, spares other creatures for him, which were all forfeited 
by man’s sin, as well as his own life, and are rather the testimonies 
of God’s patience, than the proper objects of it. The object of God’s 
goodness, then, is the whole creation; not a devil in hell, but as a 
creature, is a mark of his goodness, but not of his patience. ‘T’here 
isa kind of sparing exercised to the devils, in deferring their com- 
plete punishment, and hitherto keeping off the day wherein their 
final sentence is to be pronounced ; yet the Scripture never mentions 
this by the name of slowness to anger, or long-suffering. It can no 
more be called patience, than a prince’s keeping a malefactor in chains, 
and not pronouncing a condemning sentence, or not executing a sen- 
tence already pronounced, can be called a patience with him, when 
it is not out of kindness to the offender, but for some reasons of state. 
God’s sparing the devils from their total punishment—which they 
have not yet, but are ‘reserved in chains, under darkness for it” 
(Jude, 6)—is not in order to repentance, or attended with any invita- 
tions from God, or hopes in them; and, therefore, cannot come un- 
der the same title as God’s sparing man: where there is no proposal 
of mercy, there is no exercise of patience. The fallen angels had no 
mercy reserved for them, nor any sacrifices prepared for them; God 
“snared not the angels” (2 Pet. ii. 4), “ but delivered them into chains 
of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment,” 7. ¢. he had no patience 
for them; for patience is properly a temporary Sparing @ person, 
with a waiting of his relenting, and a change of his injurious de- 
meanor. The object of goodness is more extensive than that of pa- 
tience : nor do they both consider the object under the same relation. 
Goodness respects things in a capacity, or in a state of creation, and 


480 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


brings them forth into creation, and nurseth and supports them as 
creatures. Patience considers them already created, and fallen short 
of the duty of creatures; it considers them as sinners, or in relation 
to sinners. Had not sin entered, patience had never been exercised ; 
but goodness had been exercised, had the creature stood firm in its 
created state without any transgression; nay, creation could not 
have been without goodness, because it was goodness to create; but 
patience had never been known without an object, which could not 
have been without an injury. Where there is no wrong, no suffer- 
ing, nor like to be any, patience hath no prospect of any operation. 
So, then, goodness respects persons as creatures, patience as trans- 
gressors ; mercy eyes men as miserable and obnoxious to punish- 
ment; patience considers men as sinful, and provoking to punish- 
ment. 

2. Since it is a part of goodness and mercy, it is not an insensible 
patience. What is the fruit of pure goodness cannot be from a weak- 
ness of resentment; he is “slow to anger;” the prophet doth not 
say, he is incapable of anger, or cannot discern what is a real object 
of anger ; it implies, that he doth consider every provocation, but he 
is not hasty to discharge his arrows upon the offenders; he sees all, 
while he bears with them ; his omniscience excludes any ignorance; 
he cannot but see every wrong; every aggravation in that wrong, 
every step and motion from the beginning to the completing it; for 
he knows all our thoughts; he sees the sin and the sinner at the 
same time; the sin with an eye of abhorrency, and the sinner with 
an eye of pity. His eye is upon their iniquities, and his hatred edged 
against them; while he stands with arms open, waiting a penitent 
return. When he publisheth his patience in his keeping silence, he 

ublisheth also his resolution, to set sin in order before their eyes 
(Ps. 1. 21): “I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thy 
eyes.” Think me not such a piece of phlegm, and so dull as not to 
resent your insolences; you shall see, in my final charge, when I 
come to judge, that not a wry look escaped my knowledge, that I 
had an eye to hehold, and a heart to loathe every one of your trans- 
gressions. ‘The church was ready to think that God’s slowness to de- 
liver her, and his bearing with her oppressors, was not from any pa- 
tience in his nature, but a drowsy carelessness, a senseless lethargy 
(Ps. xliv. 23): “ Awake, why sleepest thou, O Lord?” We must 
conclude him an inapprehensive God, before we can conclude him 
an insensible God. As his delaying his promise is not slackness to 
his people (2 Pet. i. 9), so his deferring of punishment is not from 
a stupidity under the affronts offered him. 

8. Since it is a part of his mercy and goodness, it is not a con- 
strained or faint-hearted patience. It is not a slowness to anger, 
arising from a despondency of his own power to revenge. He hath 
as much power to punish as he hath to forbear punishment. He that 
created a world in six days, and that by a word, wants not a strength 
to crush all mankind in one minute; and with as much ease as a 
word imports, can give satisfaction to his justice in the blood of the 
offender. Patience in man is many times interpreted, and truly too, 
a cowardice, a feebleness of spirit, and a want of strength. But it is 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. 481 


not from the shortness of the Divine arm, that he cannot reach us, 
nor from the feebleness of his hand, that he cannot strike us. It is 
not because he cannot level us with the dust, dash us in pieces like 
a potter’s vessel, or consume us as a moth. Hecan make the might- 
iest to fall before him, and lay the strongest at his feet the first mo- 
ment of their crime. He that did not want a powerful word to create 
a world, cannot want a powerful word to dissolve the whole frame 
of it, and raze it out of being. It is not, therefore, out of a distrust 
of his own power, that he hath supported-a sinful world for so many 
ages, and patiently borne the blasphemies of some, the neglects of 
others, and the ingratitude of all, without inflicting that severe jus 
tice which righteously he might have done; he wants no thunder to 
crush the whole generation of men, nor waters to drown them, nor 
earth to swallow them up. How easy is it for him to single out this 
or that particular person to be the object of his wrath, and not of his 
patience! What he hath done to one, he may to another; any sig- 
nal judgment he hath sent upon one, is an evidence that he wants 
not power to inflict it upon all. Could he not make the motes in 
the air to choke us at every breath, rain thunderbolts instead of 
drops of water, fill the clouds with a consuming lightning, take off 
the reverence and fear of man, which he hath imprinted upon the 
creature, spirit our domestic beasts to be our executioners, unloose 
the tiles from the house-top to brain us, or make the fall of a house 
to crush us? It is but taking out the pins, and giving a blast, and 
the work is done. And doth he want a power to do any of those 
things? It is not then a faint-hearted, or feeble patience, that he 
exerciseth towards man. 

4, Since it is not for want of power over the creature, it is from a 
fulness of power over himself. ‘T’his is in the text, ‘The Lord is 
slow to anger, and great in power ;” it is a part of his dominion over 
himself, whereby he can moderate, and rule his own affections accord- 
ing to the holiness of his own will. As it is the effect of his power, 
so it is an argument of his power; the greatness of the effect demon- 
strates the fulness and sufficiency of the cause. The more feeble 
any man is in reason the less command he hath over his passions, 
and he is the more heady to revenge. Revenge is a sign of a child- 
ish mind; the stronger any man is in reason, the more command he 
hath over himself. ‘“ He that is slow to anger is better than the 
mighty; and he that rules his own spirit, than he that takes a city” 
(Prov. xvi. 32); he that can restrain his anger, is stronger than the 
Cesars and Alexanders of the world, that have filled the earth with 
slain carcasses and ruined cities. By the same reason, God’s slowness 
to anger is a greater argument of his power than the creating a world, 
or the power of dissolving it by a word; in this he hath a dominion 
over creatures, in the other over himself; this is the reason he will 
not return to destroy; because ‘I am God, and not man” (Hos. xi. 
9); I am not so weak and impotent as man, that cannot restrain his 
anger. This is a strength possessed only by a God, wherein a crea- 
ture is no more able to parallel him, than in any other; so that he 
may be said to be the Lord of himself; as it is in the verse before 
the text, that he is the Lord of anger, in the Hebrew, instead of 

VOL, 1.—31 


482 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


“ furious,” as we translate it; so he is the Lord of patience. The end 
why God is patient, is to show his power. ‘“ What if God, willing 
to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with 
much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction ?” (Rom, 
ix. 22). To show his wrath upon sinners, and his power over him- 
self in bearing such indignities, and forbearing punishment so long, 
when men were vessels of wrath fitted for destruction, of whom there 
was no hopes of amendment, Had he immediately broken in pieces 
those vessels, his power had not so eminently appeared as it hath 
done, in tolerating them so long, that had provoked him to take 
them off so often; there is indeed the power of his anger, and there 
is the power of his patience; and his power is more seen in his 
patience than in his wrath: it is no wonder that He that is above all, 
is able to crush all; but it is a wonder, that he that is provoked by 
all, doth not, upon the first provocation, rid his hands of all. This 
is the reason why he did bear such a weight of provocations from 
vessels of wrath, prepared for ruin, that he might yrwelous 10 Jururor 
avo, show what he was able to do, the lordship and royalty he had 
over himself, The power of God is more manifest in his patience 
to a multitude of sinners, than it would be in creating millions of 
worlds out of nothing; this was the duvard» ad10d, a power over him- 
self. 
_ 5. This patience being a branch of mercy, the exercise of it is 
founded in the death of Christ. Without the consideration of this, 
we can give no account why Divine patience should extend itself to 
us, and not to the fallen angels. The threatening extends itself to 
us as well as to the fallen angels; the threatening must necessarily 
have sunk man, as well as those glorious creatures, had not Christ 
stepped in to our relief. Had not Christ interposed to satisfy the 
justice of God, man upon his sin had been actually bound over to 
punishment, as well as the fallen angels were upon theirs, and been 
fettered in chains as strong as those spirits feel! The reason why 
man was not hurled into the same deplorable condition upon his sin, 
as they were, is Christ’s promise of taking our nature, and not theirs. 
Had God designed Christ’s taking their nature, the same patience 
had been exercised towards them, and the same offers would have 
been made to them, as are made to us. In regard to these fruits of 
this patience, Christ is said to buy the wickedest apostates from him: 
“Denying the Lord that bought them” (1 Pet. 11. 1). Such were 
bought by him, as “bring upon themselves just destruction, and 
whose damnation slumbers not” (ver. 8); he purchased the continu. 
ance of their lives, and the stay of their execution, that offers of 
erace might be made to them. This patience must be either upon 
the account of the law, or the gospel; for there are no other rules, 
whereby God governs the world. A fruit of the law it was not, 
that spake nothing but curses after disobedience; not a letter of 
merey was writ upon that, and therefore nothing of patience; death 
and wrath were denounced; no slowness to anger intimated. It 
must be therefore upon account of the gospel, and a fruit of the cov- 
enant of grace, whereof Christ was Mediator. Besides this. perfection 
f Testard. de Natur. et Grat. Thess, 119. 


ON GOD’S PATIENCE. 483 


being God’s “‘ waiting that he might be gracious” (Isa. xxx. 18), that 
which made way for God’s grace made way for his waiting to mani- 
fest it. God discovered not his grace, but in Christ; and therefore 
discovered not his patience but in Christ; it is im him he met with 
the satisfaction of his justice, that he might have a ground for the 
manifestation of his patience. And the sacrifices of the law, wherein 
the life of a beast was accepted for the sin of man, discovered the 
ground of his forbearance of them to be the expectation of the great 
Sacrifice, whereby sin was to be completely expiated (Gen. vii. 21). 
The publication of his patience to the end of the world is presently 
after the sweet savor he found in Noah’s sacrifice. The promised 
and designed coming of Christ, was the cause of that patience God 
exercised before in the world; and his gathering the elect together, 
is the reason of his patience since his death. 

6. The naturalness of his veracity and holiness, and the strictness 
of his justice, are no bars to the exercise of his patience. 

(1.) His veracity. In those threatenings where the punishment is 
expressed, but not the time of inflicting it prefixed and determined 
in the threatening, his veracity suffers no damage by the delaying 
execution; so it be once done, though a long time after, the credit 
of his truth stands unshaken: as when God promises a thing with- 
out fixing the the time, he is at liberty to pitch upon what time he 
pleases for the performance of it, without staining his faithfulness to 
his word, by not giving the thing promised presently. Why should 
the deferring of justice upon an offender be any more against his 
veracity than his delaying an answer to the petitions of a supplant? 
But the difference will lie in the threatening. “In the day thou eat- 
est thereof, thou shalt die the death” (Gen. 1. 17). The time was 
there settled; “in that day thou shalt die;” some refer “day” to 
eating, not to dying; and render the sentence thus: I do not pro- 
hibit thee the eating this fruit for a day or two, but continually. In 
whatsoever day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt die; but not under- 
standing his dying that very day he should eat of it; referring 
“day” to the extensiveness of the prohibition, as to time. But to 
leave this as uncertain, it may be answered, that as in some tbreat- 
enings a condition is implied, though not expressed, as in that posi- 
tive denouncing of the destruction of Ninevah: “ Yet forty days, 
and Ninevah shall be destroyed” (Jonah, ii. 4), the condition is im- 
plied; unless they humble themselves, and repent; for upon their 
repentance, the sentence was deferred. So here, ‘in the day thou 
eatest thereof, thou shalt die the death,” or certainly die, unless there 
be a way found for the expiation of thy crime, and the righting my 
honor. This condition, in regard of the event, may as well be as- 
serted to be implied in this threatening, as that of repentance was in 
the other; or rather, ‘thou shalt die,” thou shalt die spiritually, thou 
shalt lose that image of mine in thy nature, that righteousness which 
is as much the life of thy soul as thy- soul is the life of thy body; 
that righteousness whereby thou art enabled to live to me and thy 
own happiness. What the soul is to the body, a quickening soul, 
that the image of God is to the soul, a quickening image. Or “thou 
shalt die the death,” or certainly die; thou shalt be lable to death. 


484 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


And so it is to be understood, not of an actual death of the body, 
but the merit of death, and the necessity of death; thou wilt be ob- 
noxious to death, which will be avoided, if thou dost forbear to eat 
of the forbidden fruit; thou shalt be a guilty person, and so under 
a sentence of death, that I may, when I please, inflict it on thee.’ 
Death did come upon Adam that day, because his nature was vitiat- 
ed; he was then also under an expectation of death, he was obnox- 
ious to it, though that day it was not poured out upon him in the 
full bitterness and gall of it: as when the apostle saith, “The body 
is dead because of sin” (Rom. viii. 10), he speaks to the living, and 
yet tells them the body was dead because of sin; he means no more 
than that it was under a sentence, and soa necessity of dying, though 
not actually dead; so thou shalt be under the sentence of death that 
day, as certainly as if that day thou shouldst sink into the dust: and 
as by his patience towards man, not sending forth death upon him 
in all the bitter ingredients of it, his justice afterwardswas more 
eminent upon man’s surety, than it would have been if it had been 
then employed in all its severe operations upon man. So was his 
yeracity eminent also in making good this threatening, in inflicting 
the punishment included in it upon our nature assumed by a mighty 
Person, and upon that Person in our nature, who was infinitely 
higher than our nature. 

(2.) His justice and righteousness are not prejudiced by his pa- 
tience. There is a hatred of the sin in his holiness, and a sen- 
tence past against the sin in his justice, though the execution of 
that sentence be suspended, and the person reprieved by patience, 
which is implied (Eccles. viii. 11): “Because sentence against an 
evil work is not executed speedily; therefore, the heart of the sons 
of men is fully set in them to do evil;” sentence is past, but a speedy 
execution is stopped. Some of the heathens, who would not magine 
God unjust, and yet, seeing the villanies and oppressions of men in 
the world remain unpunished, and frequently beholding prosperous 
wickedness, to free him from the charge of injustice, denied his 
providence and actual government of the world; for if he did 
take notice of human affairs, and concern himself in what was done 
upon the earth, they could not think an Infinite Goodness and Jus- 
tice could be so slow to punish oppressors, and relieve the misera- 
ble, and leave the world in that disorder under the injustice of men : 
they judged such a patience as was exercised by him, if he did gov 
ern the world, was drawn out beyond the line of fit and just. Is is 
not a presumption in men to prescribe a rule of righteousness and 
conveniency to their Creator? It might be demanded of such, whe- 
ther they never injured any in their lives; and when certainly they 
have one way or another, would they not think ita very unworthy, 
if not unjust, thing, that a person so injured by them should take a 
speedy and severe revenge on them ?—and if every man should do 
the like, would there not be a speedy despatch made of mankind? 
Would not the world be a shambles, and men rush forwards to one 
another’s destructions, for the wrongs they have mutually received? 
If it be accounted a virtue in man, and no unrighteousness, not pre- 

& Perer, in loe. 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. 485 


sently to be all on fire against an offence; by what right should any 
question the inconsistency of God’s patience with his justice? Do 
we praise the lenity of parents to children, and shall we disparage 
the long-suffering of God to men? We do not censure the right- 
eousness of physicians and chirurgeons, because they cut not off a 
corrupt member this day as well as to-morrow? And is it just to 
asperse God, because he doth defer his vengeance which man as- 
sumes to himself a right to do? We never account him a bad gov- 
ernor that defers the trial, and consequently the condemnation and 
execution of a notorious offender for important reasons, and bene- 
ficial to the public, either to make the nature of his crime more evi- 
dent, or to find out the rest of his complices by his discovery. A 
governor, indeed, were unjust, if he commanded that which were 
unrighteous, and forbade that which were worthy and commenda- 
ble; but if he delays the execution of a convict offender for weighty 
reasons, either for the benefit of the state whereof he is the ruler, or 
for some advantage to the offender himself, to make him have a 
sense of, and a regret for his offence, we account him not unjust for 
this. God doth not by his patience dispense with the holiness of 
his law, nor cut off anything from its due authority. If men do 
strengthen themselves by his long-suffering against his law, it is 
their fault, not any unrighteousness in him; he will take a time to 
vindicate the righteousness of his own commands, if men will 
wholly neglect the time of his patience, in forbearing to pay a duti- 
ful observance to his precept. If justice be natural to him, and he 
cannot but punish sin, yet he is not necessitated to consume sinners, 
as the fire doth stubble put into it, which hath no command over its 
own qualities to restrain them from acting ; but God is a free agent, 
and may choose his own time for the distribution of that punish- 
ment his nature leads him to. Though he be naturally just, yet it 
is not so natural to him, as to deprive him of a dominion over his 
own acts, and a freedom in the exerting them what time he judgeth 
most convenient in his wisdom. God is necessarily holy, and is ne- 
cessarily angry with sin; his nature can never like it, and cannot 
but be displeased with it; yet he hath a liberty to restrain the effects 
of this anger for a time, without disgracing his holiness, or being in- 
terpreted to act unrighteously ; as well as a prince or state may sus- 
pend the execution of a law, which they will never break, only for 
a time and for a public benefit. If God should presently execute 
his justice, this perfection of patience, which is a part of his good- 
ness, would never have an opportunity of discovery ; part of his 
glory, for which he created the world, would lie in obscurity from 
the knowledge of his creature; his justice would be signal in the 
destruction of sinners, but this stream of his goodness would be 
stopped up from any motion. One perfection must not cloud an- 
other; God hath his seasons to discover all, one after another: “The 
times and seasons are in his own power” (Acts, i. 7): the seasons of 
manifesting his own perfections as well as other things; succession 
of them, in their distinct appearance, makes no Invasion upon the 
rights of any. If justice should complain of an injury from pa- 
tience, because it is delayed, patience hath more reason to complain 


486 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


of an injury from justice, that by such a plea it would be wholly 
obscured and inactive: for this perfection hath the shortest time to 
act its part of any, it hath no stage but this world to move in; 
mercy hath a heaven, and justice a hell, to display itself to eternity, 
but long-suffering hath only a short-lived earth for the compass of 
its operation. Again, justice’ is so far from being wronged by pa- 
tience, that it rather is made more illustrious, and hath the fuller 
scope to exercise itself; it is the more righted for being deferred, and 
will have stronger grounds than before for its activity ; the equity 
of it will be more apparent to every reason, the objections more 
fully answered against it, when the way of dealing with sinners by 
patience hath been slighted. When this dam of long-suffering is re- 
moved, the floods of fiery justice will rush down with more force 
and violence; justice will be fully recompensed for the delay, when, 
after patience is abused, it can spread itself over the offender with a 
more unquestionable authority ; it will have more arguments to hit 
the sinner in the teeth with, and silence him; there will be a sharper 
edge for every stroke; the sinner must not only pay for the score 
-of his former sins, but the score of abused patience, so that justice 
hath no reason to commence a suit against God’s slowness to anger : 
what it shall want by the fulness of mercy upon the truly penitent, 
it will gain by the contempt of patience on the impenitent abusers. 
When men, by such a carriage, are ripened for the stroke of justice, 
justice may strike without any regret in itself, or pull-back from 
mercy; the contempt of long-suffering will silence the pleas of the 
one, and spirit the severity of the other. To conclude: since God 
hath glorified his justice on Christ, as a surety for sinners, his pa- 
tience isso far from interfering with the rights of his justice, that it 
promotes it; it is dispensed to this end, that God might pardon with 
honor, both upon the score of purchased mercy and contented jus- 
tice; that by a penitent sinner’s return his mercy might be acknowl- 
edged free, and the satisfaction of his justice by Christ be glorified 
in believing: for he is long-suffering from an unwillingness “that 
any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Pet. 
ili. 9); 2. e all to whom the promise is made, for to such the apostle 
speaks, and calls it “ long-suffering to us-ward ;” and repentance be- 
ing an acknowledgment of the demerit of sin, and a breaking off 
unrighteousness, gives a particular glory to the freeness of mercy, 
and the equity of justice. 
IL. The second thing, How this patience or slowness to anger 1s 
manifested. | 
1. To our first parents. His slowness to anger was evidenced in 
not directing his artillery against them, when they first attempted to 
rebel. He might have struck them dead when they began to bite at 
the temptation, and were inclinable to a surrender; for it was a de- 
gree of sinning, and a breach of loyalty as well, though not so much 
as the consummating act. God might have given way to the floods 
of his wrath at the first spring of man’s aspiring thoughts, when the 
monstrous motion of being as God began to be curdled in his heart; 
but he took no notice of any of their embryo sins till they came to a 
ripeness, and started out of the womb of their minds into the open 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. A487 


air: and after he had brought his sin to perfection, God did not 
presently send that death upon him, which he had merited, but con- 
tinued his life to the space of 930 years (Gen. v. 5). The sun and 
stars were not arrested from doing their office for him. Creatures 
were continued for his use, the earth did not swallow him up, nor a 
thunderbolt from heaven raze out the memory of him. Though he 
had deserved to be treated with such a severity for his ungrateful 
demeanor to his Creator and Benefactor, and affecting an equality 
with him, yet God continued him with a sufficiency for his content, 
afier he turned rebel, though not with such a liberality as when he 
remained a loyal subject; and though he foresaw that he would not 
make an end of sinning, but with an end of living, he used him not 
in the same manner as he had used the devils. He added days and 
years to him, after he had deserved death, and hath for this 5,000 
years continued the propagation of mankind, and derived from his 
loins an innumerable posterity, and hath crowned multitudes of 
them with hoary heads. He might have extinguished human race 
at the first; but since he hath preserved it till this day, it must be 
interpreted nothing else but the effect of an admirable patience. 

9. His slowness to anger is manifest to the Gentiles. What they 
were, we need no other witness than the apostle Paul, who sums up 
many of their crimes (Rom. i. 29—32). He doth preface the cata- 
logue with a comprehensive expression, “ Being filled with all un- 
righteousness ;” and concludes it with a dreadful ageravation, “They 
not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.” They 
were so soaked and naturalized in wickedness, that they had no de- 
light, and found no sweetness in anything else but what was in itself 
abominable; all of them were plunged in idolatry and superstition ; 
none of them but either set up their great men, or creatures, benefi- 
cial to the world, and some the damned spirits in his stead, and paid 
an adoration to insensible creatures or devils, which was due to God. 
Some were so depraved in their lives and actions, that it seemed to 
be the interest of the rest of the world, that they should have been 
extinguished for the instruction of their contemporaries and pos- 
terity. The best of them had turned all religion into a fable, coimed 
a world of rites, some unnatural in themselves, and most of them un- 
becoming a rational creature to offer, and a Deity to accept: yet he 
did not presently arm himself against them with fire and sword, nor 
stopped the course of their generations, nor tear out all those relics 
of natural light which were left in their minds. He did not do what 
he might have done, but he winked at the “‘ times of that ignorance” 
(Acts, xvii. 30), their ignorant idolatry; for that it refers to (ver. 
99): “They thought the Godhead was like to gold or silver, or stone 
graven by art, and men’s device; ‘Sxegdor, overlooking them. He 
demeaned himself so, as if he did not take notice of them. He 
winked as if he did not see them, and would not deal so severely 
with them: the eye of his justice seemed to wink, in not calling them 
to an account for their sin. 

3. His slowness to anger is manifest to the Israelites. You know 
how often they are called a “stiff-necked people ;” they are said to 
do evil “from their youth ;” 2. e. from the time wherein they were 


488 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


erected a nation and commonwealth; and that “the city had been 
a provocation of his anger, and of his fury, from the day that they 
built it, even to this day ;” 2. e¢ the day of Jeremiah’s prophecy, 
“that he should remove it from before his face” (Jer. xxxii. 31); 
from the days of Solomon, say some, which is too much a curtailing 
of the text, as though their provocations had taken date no higher 
than from the time of Solomon’s rearing the temple, and beautifying 
the city, whereby it seemed to be a new building. They began more 
early ; they scarce discontinued their revolting from God; they were 
a “ grief to him forty years together in the wilderness” (Ps. xcv. 10), 
‘‘yet he suffered their manners” (Acts, xii. 18). He bore with their 
ull-bchaviour and sauciness towards him; and no sooner was Joshua's 
head laid, and the elders, that were their conductors, gathered to 
their fathers, but the next generation forsook God, and smutted 
themselves with the idolatry of the nations (Judges, ii. 7, 10, aE 
and when he punished them by prospering the arms of their enemies 
against them, they were no sooner delivered upon their cry and hu- 
miliation, but they began a new scene of idolatry; and though he 
brought upon them the power of the Babylonian empire, and laid 
chains upon them to bring them to their right mind. And at seventy 
years’ end he struck off their chains, by altering the whole posture 
of affairs in that part of the world for their sakes: overturning one 
empire, and settling another for their restoration to their ancient city. 
And though they did not after disown him for their God, and set up 
‘Baal in his throne,” yet they multiplied foolish traditions, whereby 
they impaired the authority of the law; yet he sustained them with 
a wonderful patience, and preferred them before all other people in 
the first offers of the gospel; and after they had outraged not only 
his servants, the prophets, but his Son, the Redeemer, yet he did not 
forsake them, but employed his apostles to solicit them, and publish 
among them the doctrine of salvation: so that his treating this peo- 
ple might well be called “‘ much long-suffering,” it being above 1500 
years, wherein he bore with them, or mildly punished them, far less 
than their deserts; their coming out of Egypt being about the year 
of the world 2450, and their final destruction as a commonwealth, 
not till about forty years after the death of Christ; and all this while 
his patience did sometimes wholly restrain his justice, and sometimes 
let it fall upon them in some few drops, but made no total devasta- 
tion of their country, nor wrote his revenge in extraordinary bloody 
characters, till the Roman conquest, wherein he put a period to 
them both as a church and state. In particular this patience is 
manifest, 

ist. In his giving warnings of judgments, before he orders them 
to go forth. He doth not punish in a passion, and hastily ; he speaks 
before he strikes, and speaks that he may not strike. Wrath is pub- 
lished before it 1s executed, and that a long time; an hundred and 
twenty years’ advertisement was given to a debauched world before 
the heavens were opened, to spout down a deluge upon them. He 
will not be: accused of coming unawares upon a people; he inflicts 
nothing but what he foretold either immediately to the people that 
provoke him, or anciently to them that have been their forerunners 


ON GOD’S PATIENCE, — 489 


in the same provocation (Hos. vi. 12), “I will chastise them, as their 
congregation hath heard.” Many of the leaves of the Old Testament 
are full of those presages and warnings of approaching judgment. 
‘These make up a great part of the volume of it in various editions, 
according to the state of the several provoking times. Warnings are 
given to those people that are most abominable in his sight (Zeph. ii. 
1, 2); ‘Gather yourselves together, yea, gather together, O nation 
not desired,”—it is a Meiosts, O nation abhorred,—“ before the decree 
bring forth.” He sends his heralds before he sends his armies; he 
summons them by the voice of his prophets, before he confounds 
them by the voice of his thunders. When a parley is beaten, a 
white flag of peace is hung out, before a black flag of fury is set up. 
He seldom cuts down men by his judgments, before he hath “ hewed 
them by his prophets” (Hos. vi. 5). Not aremarkable judgement but 
was foretold: the flood to the old world by Noah; the famine to 
Kgypt by Joseph; the earthquake by Amos (ch. i. 1); the storm 
from Chaldea by Jeremiah; the captivity of the ten tribes by Hosea; 
the total destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple by Christ himself. 
He hath chosen the. best persons in the world to give those intima- 
tions; Noah, the most righteous person on the earth, for the old 
world; and his Son, the most beloved person in heaven, for the Jews 
in the later time: and in other parts of the world, and in the later 
times, where he hath not warned by prophets, he hath supplied it by 
prodigies in the air and earth; histories are full of such items from 
heaven. Lesser judgments are forewarners of greater, as lightnings 
before thunder are messengers to tell us of a succeeding clap. 

(1). He doth often give warning of judgments. He comes not to 
extremity, till he hath often shaken the rod over men; he thunders 
often, before he crusheth them with his thunderbolt; he doth not 
till after the first and second admonition punish arebel, as he would 
have us reject a heretic. ‘“ He speaks once, yea, twice” (Job, xxxiii. 
14), “and man perceives it not;” he sends one message after an- 
other, and waits the success of many messages before he strikes. 
Eight prophets were ordered to acquaint the whole world with 
approaching judgment (2 Pet. i. 5): he saved ‘Noah, the eighth 
person, a preacher of righteousness, bringing in the flood upon the 
world of the ungodly,” called “ the eighth” in respect of his preach- 
ing, not in regard of his preservation; he was the eighth preacher 
in order, from the beginning of the world, that endeavored to restore 
the world to the way of righteousness. Most, indeed, consider him 
here as the eighth person saved, so do our translators; and, there- 
fore, add person, whichis not in the Greek. Some others consider 
him here as the eighth preacher of righteousness, reckoning Enoch, 
the son of Seth, the first, grounding it upon Gen. iv. 26: “Then 
began men to call upon the name of the Lord,” Hed. “‘ Then it was 
began to call in the name of the Lord,” 16 dvouu 105 Kugiov Gov. Sept. 
“He began to call in the name of the Lord,” which others render, 
‘He began to preach, or call upon men in the name of the Lord.” 
The word s>p signifies to preach, or to call upon men by preach- 
ing (Prov. i. 21): “ Wisdom erieth,” or ‘‘ preaches ;” and if this be 
so, as it is very probable, it is easy to reckon him the eighth 


4 


490 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


reacher, by numbering the successive heads of the generations 
(Gen. v.), beginning at Enoch, the first preacher of righteousness. 
So many there were before God choked the old world with water, 
and swept them away. Itisclear he often did admonish, by his 
prophets, the Jews of their sin, and the wrath which should come 
upon them. One prophet, Hosea, prophesied seventy years; for 
he prophesied in the days of four kings of Judah, and one of Israel, 
Jeroboam, the son of Joash (Hos. i. 1), or Jeroboam, the second of 
that name. Uzziah, king of Judah, in whose reign Hosea pro- 
phesied, lived thirty-eight years after the death of Jeroboam. ‘The 
second Jotham, Uzziah’s successor, reigned sixteen years; Ahaz 
sixteen; Hezekiah twenty-nine years. Now, take nothing of Heze- 
kiah’s time, and date the beginning of his prophecy from the last 
year of Jeroboam’s reign, and the time of Hosea’s prophecy will be 
seventy years complete; wherein God warned those people, and 
waited the return particularly of Israel ;: and not less than five of 
those we call the Lesser Prophets, were sent to foretell the destruc- 
tion of the ten tribes, and to call them to repentance,—Hosea, 
~~ Joel, Amos, Micah, Jonah; and though we have nothing of Jonah’s 
prophecy in this concern of Israel, yet that he lived in the time of 
the same Jeroboam, and prophesied things which are not upon 
record in the book of Jonah, is clear (2 Kings, xiv. 25). And 
besides those, Isaiah prophesied also in the reign of the same kings 
as Hosea did (Isa. i. 1); and itis God’s usual method to send forth 
his servants, and when their admonitions are slighted he commissions 
others, before he sends out his destroying armies (Matt. xxii. 
3, 4, 7). 

(2). te doth often give warning of judgments, that he might 
not pour out his wrath. He summons them to a surrender of 
themselves, and a return from their rebellion, that they might not 
feel the force of his arms. He offers peace before he shakes off the 
dust of his feet, that his despised peace might not return in vain to 
him to solicit a revenge from his anger. He hath a right to punish 
upon the first commission of a crime, but he warns men of what 
they have deserved, of what his justice moves him to inflict, that 
by having recourse to his mercy he might not exercise the rights 
of his justice. God sought to kill Moses for not circumcising his 
son (Exod. iv. 24). Could God, that sought it, miss a way to do 
it? Could a creature lurch, or fly from him? God put on the 
garb of an enemy, that Moses might be discouraged from being an 
instrument of his own ruin: God manifested an anger against Moses 
for his neglect, as if he would then have destroyed him, that Moses 
might prevent it by casting off his carelessness, and doing his duty. 
He sought to kill him by some evident sign, that Moses might es- 
cape the judgment by his obedience. He threatens Nineveh, by 
the prophet, with destruction, that Nineveh’s repentance might 
make void the prophecy. He fights with men by the sword of his 
mouth, that he might not pierce them by the sword of his wrath. 
He threatens, that men might prevent the execution of his threaten- 
ing; he terrifies, that he might not destroy, but that men by humi- 

h Vid. Gell’s AyyeAokatia. i Sanctius. Prolegom. in Hosea, Prolog. III. 


ON GOD’S PATIENCE. 491 


lation may lie prostrate before him, and move the bowels of his 
mercy to a louder sound than the voice of his anger. He takes 
time to whet his sword, that men may turn themselves from the 
edge of it. He roars like a lion, that men, by hearing his voice, 
may shelter themselves from being torn by his wrath. There is 
patience in the sharpest threatening, that we may avoid the scourge. 
Who can charge God with an eagerness to revenge, that sends so 
many heralds, and so often before he strikes, that he might be pre- 
vented from striking? His threatenings have not so much of a 
black flag as of an olive branch. He lifts up his hand before he 
strikes, that men might see and avert the stroke (Isa. xxvi. 11). 

2d. His patience is manifest in long delaying his threatened judg- 
ments, though he finds no repentance in the rebels. He doth some- 
times delay his lighter punishments, because he doth not delight in 
torturing his creatures; but he doth longer delay his destroying pun- 
ishments, such as put an end to men’s happiness, and remit them 
to their final and unchangeable state; because he “doth not de- 
light in the death of a sinner.” While he is preparing his arrows, 
he is waiting for an occasion to lay them aside, and dull their 
points, that he may with honor march back again, and disband his 
armies. He brings lighter smarts sooner, that men might not think 
him asleep, but he suspends the more terrible judgments that men 
might be led to repentance. He-scatters not his consuming fires at 
the first, but brings on ruining vengeance with a “slow pace; sen- 
tence against an evil work is not speedily executed” (Kccles. viii. 11). 
The Jews therefore say, that Michael, the minister of justice, flies 
with one wing, but Gabriel, the minister of mercy, with two. An 
hundred and twenty years did God wait upon the old world, and 
delay their punishment all the time the “ark was preparing” 
(1 Pet. iti. 20); wherein that wicked generation did not enjoy only 
a bare patience, but a striving patience (Gen. vi. 8): ‘My Spirit 
shall not always strive with man, yet his days shall be one hundred 
and twenty years,” the days wherein I will strive with him; that 
his long-suffering might not lose all its fruit, and remit the objects 
of it into the hands of consuming justice. It was the tenth genera- 
tion of the world from Adam, when the deluge overflowed it, so 
long did God bear with them: and the tenth generation from Noah 
wherein Sodom was consumed. God did not come to keep his as- 
sizes in Sodom, till “the cry of their sins was very strong,” that it 
had been a wrong to his justice to have restrained it any longer. 
The cry was so loud that he could not be at quiet, as it were, on 
his throne of glory for the disturbing noise (Gen. xviii. 20, 21). 
Sin transgresseth the law; the law being violated, solicits justice ; 
justice, being urged, pleads for punishment; the cry of their sins 
did, as it were, force him from heaven to come down, and examine 
what cause there was for that clamor. Sin cries loud and long be- 
fore he takes his sword in hand. Four hundred years he kept off 
deserved destruction from the Amorites, and deferred making good 
his promise to Abraham, of giving Canaan to his posterity, out of his 
long-suffering to the Amorites (Gen. xv. 16). In the fourth gene- 
ration they shall come hither again, “ for the iniquity of the Amor- 


492 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


ites is not yet full.” Their measure was filling then, but not so 
full as to put a stop to any further patience till four hundred years 
after. The usual time in succeeding generations, from the denounc- 
ing of judgments to the execution, is forty years; this some ground 
upon Ezek. iv. 6, “Thou shalt bear the iniquity of the house of 
Judah forvy days,” taking each day for a year. Though Hosea 
lived seventy years, yet from the beginning of his prophesying 
judgments against Israel to the pouring them out upon that idola- 
trous people, it was forty years. Hosea, as was mentioned before, 
prophesied against them in the days of Jeroboam the Second, in 
whose time God did wonderfully deliver Israel (2 Kings, xiv. 26, 
27). From that time, till the total destruction of the ten tribes, it 
was forty years, as may easily be computed from the story (2 Kings, 
Xv.—xvi.), by the reign of the succeeding kings. So forty years 
after the most horrid villany that ever was committed in the face of 
the sun, wz., the crucifying the Son of God, was Jerusalem de- 
stroyed, and the inhabitants captived; so long did God delay a 
visible punishment for such an outrage. Sometimes he prolongs 
sending a threatened judgment upon a mere shadow of humiliation ; 
so he did that denounced against Ahab. He turned it over to his 
posterity, and adjourned it to another season (1 Kings, xxi. 29). He 
doth not issue out an arrest upon one transgression ; you often find 
him not commencing a suit against men till “three and four trans- 
gressions.” The first of Amos, all along that chapter and the second 
chapter, for ‘‘three and four,” @.e. ‘‘seven ;” a certain number for an 
uncertain. He gives not orders to his judgments to march till men 
be obstinate, and refuse any commerce with him; he stops them till 
“there be no remedy” (2 Chron. xxxvi. 16). It must be a great 
wickedness that gives vent to them (Hos. x. 15); Heb. “ Your 
wickedness of wickedness.” He isso “slow to anger,” and stays the 
punishment his enemies deserve, that he may seem to have forgot 
his “ kindness to his friends” (Ps. xliv. 24): ‘“‘ Wherefore hidest thou 
thy face, and forgettest our affliction and oppression?” He lets his 
people groan under the yoke of their enemies, as if he were made 
up of kindness to his enemies, and anger against his friends. This 
delaying of punishment to evil men is visible in his suspending the 
terrifying acts of conscience, and supporting it only in its checking, 
admonishing, and controlling acts. The patience of a governor is 
seen in the patient mildness of his deputy: David's conscience did not 
terrify him till nine months after his sin of murder. Should God 
set open the mouth of this power within us, not only the earth, but 
nur own bodies and spirits, would be a burden to us: it is long be- 
fore God puts scorpions into the hands of men’s consciences to 
scourge them: he holds back the rod, waiting for the hour of our 
return, as if that would be a recompense for our offences and his 
forbearance. 

3d. His patience is manifest in his unwillingness to execute his 
judgments when he can delay no longer. “He doth not afflict 
willingly, nor grieve the children of men” (Lam. 1. 83): Heb. “ He 
doth not afflict from his heart:” he takes no pleasure in it, as he is 
Creator. The height of men’s provocations, and the necessity of the 


ON GOD’S PATIENCE. 498 


pager ving his rights, and vindicating his laws, obligeth him to it, as 
e is the Governor cf the world; as a judge may willingly condemn 
a-malefactor to death out of affection to the laws, and desire to pre- 
serve the order of government, but unwillingly, out of compassion 
to the offender himself. When he resolved upon the destruction of 
the old world, he spake it as a God grieved with an occasion of pun- 
ishment (Gen. vi. 6, 7, compared together). When he came to reckon 
with Adam, “he walked,” he did not run with his sword in his hand 
upon him, as a mighty man with an eagerness to destroy him (Gen. 
ii, 8), and that “in the cool of the day,” a time when men, tired in 
the day, are unwilling to engage in a hard employment. His exer- 
cising judgment is a “coming out of his place” (Isa. xxvi. 21; Mic. 
i. 8): he comes out of his station to exercise judgment; a throne is 
more his place than a tribunal. Every prophecy, loaded with threat- 
enings, is called the “ burden of the Lord ;” a burden to him to exe- 
cute it, as well as to men to suffer it. Though three angels came to 
Abraham about the punishment of Sodom, whereof one Abraham 
speaks to as to God, yet but two appeared at the destruction of Sod- 
om, as if the Governor of the world were unwilling to be present at 
such dreadful work (Gen. xix. 1): and when the man, that had the 
ink-horn by his side, that was appointed to mark those that were to 
be preserved in the common destruction, returned to give an account 
of the performing his commission (Hzek. ix. 10), we read not of the 
return of those that were to kill, as if God delighted only to hear 
again of his works of mercy, and had no mind to hear again of his 
severe proceedings. The Jews, to show God’s unwillingness to 
punish, imagine that hell was created the second day, because that 
day’s work is not pronounced good by God as all the other days’ 
works arek (Gen. 1. 8). 

(1.) When God doth punish he doth it with some regret. When 
he hurls down his thunders, he seems to do it with a backward hand, 
because with an unwilling heart.! He created, saith Chrysostom, the 
world in six days, but was seven days in destroying one city, Jericho, 
which he had before devoted to be razed to the ground. What is the 
reason, saith he, that God is so quick to build up, but slow to pull 
down? His goodness excites his power to the one, but is not earn- 
est to persuade him to the other: when he comes to strike, he doth 
it with a sigh or groan (Isa. i. 24): ‘ Ah! I will ease me of my ad- 
versaries, and avenge me on my enemies,” "4, Ah! a note of grief. 
So Hos. vi. 4, “O Ephraim! what shall 1 do unto thee? O Judah! 
what shall I do unto thee?” Itisan addubitatio, a figure in rhetoric, 
as if God were troubled that he must deal so sharply with them, and 
give them up to their enemies:—I have tried all means to reclaim 

ou; I have used all ways of kindness, and nothing prevails; what 
shall I do? my mercy invites me to spare them, and their ingratitude 
provokes me to ruin them. God had borne with that people of 
Israel almost three hundred years, from the setting up of the calves 
at Dan and Bethel; sent many a prophet to warn them, and spent 
many a rod to reform them: and when he comes to execute his 
threatenings, he doth with a conflict in himself (Hos. x. 8): “ How 

& Mercer in Gen. 1 Cressol. Decad. IJ. p. 163. 


494 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


shall I give thee up, O Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel ?” 
as if there were a pull-back in his own bowels. He solemnizeth 
_ their approaching funeral with a hearty groan, and takes his farewell 
of the dying malefactor with a pang in himself. How often, in for- 
mer times, when he had signed a warrant for their execution, did he 
call it back? (Ps. lxxvi. 38): “ Many a time turned he his anger 
away.” Many a time he recalled or ordered his anger to return 
again, as the word signifies, as if he were irresolute what to do: he 
recalled it, as a man doth his servant, several times, when he is 
sending him upon an unwelcome message; or as a tender-hearted 
prince wavers and trembles when he is to sign a writ for the death 
of a rebel that hath been before his favorite, as if, when he had sign- 
ed the writ, he blotted out his name again, and flung away the pen. 
And his method is remarkable when he came to punish Sodom; 
though the cry of their sin had been fierce in his ears, yet when he 
comes to make inquisition, he declares his intention to Abraham, as 
if he were desirous that Abraham should have helped him to some 
arguments to stop the outgoings of his judgment. He gave liberty 
to the best person in the world to stand in the gap, and enter into a 
treaty with him, to show, saith one,™ how willingly his mercy would 
have compounded with his justice for their redemption ; and Abra- 
ham interceded so long, till he was ashamed for pleading the cause 
of patience and mercy to the wrong of the rights of Divine justice. 
Perhaps, had Abraham had the courage to ask, God would have 
had the compassion to grant a reprieve just at the time of execution. 

(2.) His patience is manifest in that when he begins to send out 
his judgments, he doth it by degrees. His judgments are “as the 
morning light,” which goes forth by degrees in the hemisphere (Hos. 
vi. 5). He doth not shoot all his thunders at once, and bring his 
sharpest judgments in array at one time, but gradually, that a people 
. may have time to turn to him (Joel, i. 4). First the palmer-worm, 
then the locust, then the canker-worm, then the caterpillar; what 
one left, the other was to eat, if there were not a timely return. A 
Jewish writer" saith, these judgments came not all in one year, but 
one year after another. The palmer-worm and locust might have 
eaten all, but Divine patience set bounds to the devouring creatures. 
God had been first as a moth to Israel (Hos. v. 12): “ Tnerefore will 
I be to the house of Ephraim as a moth;” Rivet translates it, “I 
have been ;” in the Hebrew it is ‘‘I,” without adding ‘“ I have been,” 
or “I will be,” and more probably ‘‘I have been ;” I was as a moth, 
which makes little holes in a garment, and consumes it not all at 
once; and as “rottenness to the house of Judah,” or a worm that 
eats into wood by degrees. Indeed, this people had consumed in- 
sensibly, partly by civil combustions, change of governors, foreign 
invasions, yet they were as obstinate in their idolatry as ever; at 
last God would be no longer to them as a moth, but as a lion, tear 
and go away (ver. 14): so Hos. ii, God had disowned Israel for his 
spouse (ver. 2), “She is not my wife, neither am I her husband ;” 
yet he had not taken away her ornaments, which by the right of 
divorce he might have done, but still expected her reformat'on, for 

™ Pierce, Sinner Implead. p. 227. » Kimehi. 


ON GOD’S PATIENCE. 495 


that the threatening intimates (ver. 3); let her put away her whore- 
dom, “lest I strip her naked, and set her as in the day when she 
was born.” If she returned, she might recover what she had lost; 
if not, she might be stripped of what remained: thus God dealt with 
Judah (Hzek, ix. 8). The glory of God goes first from the cherub 
to the threshold of the house, and stays there, as if he had a mind to 
be invited back again; then it goes from the threshold of the house, 
and stands over the cherubims, as if upon a penitent call it would 
drop down again to its ancient station and seat, over which it hover- 
ed (Ezek. x. 18); and when he was not solicited to return, he de- 
parts out of the city, and stood upon the mountain, which is on the 
east part of the city (Ezek. xi. 23), looking still towards, and hover- ' 
ing about the temple, which was on the east of Jerusalem, as if loth 
to depart, and abandon the place and people. He walks so leisurely, 
with his rod in his hand, as if he had a mind rather to fling it away 
than use it; his patience in not pouring out all his vials, 1S more re- 
markable than his wrath in pouring out one or two. Thus hath God 
made his slowness to anger visible to us in the gradual punishment 
of us; first, the pestilence on this city, then firimg our houses, con- 
sumption of trade; these have not been answered with such a carriage 
as God expects, therefore a greater is reserved. I dare prognosti- 
cate, upon reasons you may gather from what hath been spoke be- 
fore, if I be not much mistaken, the forty years of his usual patience 
are very near expired ; he hath inflicted some, that he might be met 
with in a way of repentance, and omit with honor the inflicting the 
remainder. 

4th. His patience is manifest, in moderating his judgments, when 
he sends them. Doth he empty his quiver of his arrows, or exhaust 
his magazines of thunder? No; he could roll one thunderbolt suc- 
cessively upon all mankind; it is as easy with him to create a perpet- 
ual motion of lightning and thunder, as of the sun and stars, and 
make the world as terrible by the one, as it is delightful by the 
other. He opens not all his store, he sends out a light party to skir- 
mish with men, and puts not in array his whole army; “He stirs 
not up all his wrath” (Ps. lxxviii. 88); he doth but pinch, where he 
might have torn asunder; when he takes away much, he leaves 
enough to support us; if he had stirred up all his anger, he had 
taken away all, and our lives to boot. He rakes up but a few sparks, 
takes but one firebrand to fling upon men, when he might discharge 
the whole furnace upon them; he sends but a few drops out of the 
cloud, which he might make to break in the gross, and fall down 
upon our heads to overwhelm us; he abates much of what he might 
do. When he might sweep away a whole nation by deluges of 
water, corruption of the air, or convulsions of the earth, or by other 
ways that are not wanting at his order; he picks out only some 
persons, some families, some cities; sends a plague into one house, 
and not into another; here is patience to the stock of a nation, while 
he inflicts punishment upon some of the most notorious sinners in it. 
Herod is suddenly snatched away, being willingly flattered into the 
thoughts of his being a god; God singled out the chief in the herd 
for whose sake he had been affronted by the rabble (Acts xu. 22, 


496 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


23). Some find him sparing them, while others feel him destroying 
them ; he arrests some, when he might seize all, all being his debt- 
ors; and often in great desolations brought upon a people for their 
sin, he hath left a stump in the earth, as Daniel speaks (Dan. iv. 15), 
for a nation to grow upon it again, and arise to a stronger constitu- 
tion. He doth punish “less than our iniquities deserve” (Ezra ix. 
13), and rewards us “‘not according to our iniquities” (Ps. ciii. 10), 
The greatness of any punishment in this life, answers not the great- 
ness of the crime. ‘Though there be an equity in whatsoever he 
doth, yet there is not an equality to what we deserve; our iniquities 
would justify a severer treating of us; his justice goes not here to 
the end of its line, it is stopped in its progress, and the blows of it 
weakened by his patience; he did not curse the earth after Adam’s 
fall, that it should bring forth no fruit, but that it should not bring forth 
fruit without the wearisome toil of man, and subjected him to distem- 
pers presently, but inflicted not death immediately; while he pun- 
ished him, he supported him; and while he expelled him from 
paradise, he did not order him not to cast his eye towards it, and 
conceive some hopes of regaining that happy place. 

Sth. His patience is seen in giving great mercies after provoca- 
tions. He is so slow to anger, that he heaps many kindnesses upon 
a rebel, instead of punishment. ‘There is a prosperous wickedness, 
wherein the provoker’s strength continues firm; the troubles, which 
like clouds drop upon others, are blown away from them, and they 
are “not plagued like other men,” that have a more worthy de- 
meanor towards God (Ps. xxiii, 8—5). He doth not only continue 
their lives, but sends out fresh beams of his goodness upon them, 
and calls them by his blessings, that they may acknowledge their 
own fault and his bounty, which he is not obliged to by any grati- 
tude he meets with from them, but by the richness of his own patient 
nature: for he finds the unthankfulness of men as great as his bene- 
fits to them. He doth not only continue his outward mercies, while 
we continue our sins, but sometimes gives fresh benefits after new 
provocations, that if possible he might excite an ingenuity in men. 
When Israel at the Red Sea flung dirt in the face of God, by quar- 
relling with his servant Moses for bringing them out of Heypt, and 
misjudging God in his design of deliverance, and were ready to sub- 
mit themselves to their former oppressors (Hixod. xiv. 11, 12), which 
might justly have urged God tosay to them, Take your own course ; 
yet he is not only patient under their unjust charge, but “‘makes 
bare his arm in a deliverance at the Red Sea,” that was to be an 
amazing monument to the world in all ages; and afterwards, when 
they repiningly quarrelled with him in their wants in the wilderness, 
he did not only not revenge himself upon them, or cast off the con- 
duct of them, but bore with them by a miraculous long-suffering, 
and supplied them with miraculous provision,—manna from heaven, 
and water from a rock. Food is given to support us, and clothes to 
cover us, and Divine patience makes the creature which we turn to 
another use than what they were at first mtended for, serve us con- 
trary to their own genius: for had they reason, no question but 
they would complain to be subjected to the service of man, who 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. 497 


hath been so ungrateful to their Creator, and groan at the abuse 
of God’s patience, in the abuse they themselves suffer from the 
hands of man. 

6th. All this is more manifest, if we consider the provocations he 
hath. Wherein his slowness to anger infinitely transcends the pa- 
tience of any creature; nay, the spirits of all the angels and glorified 
saints in heaven, would be too narrow to bear the sins of the world 
for one day, nay, not so much as the sins of churches, which is a lit- 
tle spot in the whole world; it is because he is the Lord, one of an 
infinite power over himself, that not only the whole mass of the re- 
bellious world, but of the sons of Jacob (either considered as a 
church and nation springing from the loins of Jacob, or considered 
as the regenerate part of the world, sometimes called the seed of 
Jacob), “are not consumed” (Mal. iii. 6). A Jonah was angry with 
God, for recalling his anger from a sinful people; had God com- 
mitted the government of the world to the glorified saints, who are 
perfect in love and holiness, the world would have had an end long 
ago; they would have acted that which they sue for at the hands of 
God, and is not granted them. ‘How long, Lord, holy and true, 
dost thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth ?” 
(Rey. vi. 10). God hath designs of patience above the world, above 
the unsinning angels, and perfectly renewed spirits in glory. The 
greatest created long-suffering is infinitely disproportioned to the Di- 
vine: fire from heaven would have been showered down before the 
greatest part of a day were spent, if a created patience had the con- 
duct of the world, though that creature were possessed with the spirit 
of patience, extracted from all the creatures which are in heaven, or 
are, or ever were upon the earth. Methinks Moses intimates this; for 
as soon as God had passed by, proclaiming his name gracious and 
long suffering, as soon as ever Moses had paid his adoration, he falls 
to praying that God would go with the Israelites; “For it is a stiff: 
necked people” (Exod. xxxiv. 8, 9). What an argument is here for 
God to go along with them! he might rather, since he had heard 
him but just before say “he would by no means clear the guilty,” 
desire God to stand further off from them, for fear the fire of his 
wrath should burst out from him, to burn them as he did the Sodom- 
ites. But he considers, that as none but God had such anger to 
destroy them, so none but God had such a patience to bear with 
them; it is as much asif he should have said, Lord! if thou shouldest 
send the most tender-hearted angel in heaven to have the guidance 
of this people, they would be a lost people; a period will quickly 
be set to their lives, no created strength can restrain its power from 
crushing such a stiffnecked people; flesh and blood cannot bear 
them, nor any created spirit of a greater might. 

(1.) Consider the greatness of the provocations. No light matter, 
but actions of a great defiance: what is the practical language of 
most in the world, but that of Pharoah? ‘Who is the Lord, that I 
should obey him?” How many questions his being, and more his 
authority ? What blasphemies of him, what reproaches of his Ma- 
jesty! Men “drinking up iniquity like water,” and with a haste 
and ardency “rushing into sin, as the horse into the battle.” What 

VOL, 11.—32 


498 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


1s there in the reasonable creature, that hath the quickest capacity, 
and the deepest obligation to serve him, but opposition and enmity, 
a slight of him in everything, yea, the services most seriously per- 
formed, unsuited to the royalty and purity of so great a Being? such 
provocations as dare him to his face, that are a burden to so right- 
eous a Judge, and so great a lover of the authority and majesty of 
his laws; that were there but a spark of anger in him, it isa wonder 
it doth not show itself, When he is invaded in all his attributes, it 
is astonishing that this single one of patience and meekness should 
withstand the assault of all the rest of his perfections; his being, 
which is attacked by sin, speaks for vengeance ; his justice cannot 
be imagined to stand silent without charging the sinner. His holi- 
ness cannot but encourage his justice to urge its pleas, and be an ad- 
vyocate for it. His omniscience proves the truth of all the charge, 
and his abused mercy hath little encouragement to make opposition 
to the indictment; nothing but patience stands in the gap to keep 
off the arrest of judgment from the sinner. 

(2.) His patience is manifest, if you consider the multitudes of these 
_ provocations. Every man hath sin enough in a day to make him 
stand amazed at Divine patience, and to call it, as well as the apostle 
did, “all long-suffering” (1 Tim. i. 16). How few duties of a per- 
fectly right stamp are performed | What unworthy considerations 
mix themselves, like dross, with our purest and sincerest gold! How 
more numerous are the respects of the worshippers of him to them- 
selves, than unto him! How many services are paid him, not out 
of love to him, but because he should do us no hurt, and some ser- 
vice; when we do not so much design to please him, as to please 
ourselves by expectations of a reward from him! What master 
would endure a servant that endeavored to please him, only because 
he should not killhim? Is that former charge of God upon the old 
world yet out of date, “That the imagination of the thoughts of 
the heart of man was only evil, and that continually ?” (Gen. vi. 5.) 
Was not the new world as chargeable with it as the old? Certainly 
it was (Gen. viii. 21); and is of as much force this very minute as 
it was then. How many are the sins against knowledge, as well as 
those of ignorance ; presumptuous sins, as well as those of infirmity ! 
How numerous those of omission and commission! It is above the 
reach of any man’s understanding to conceive all the blasphemies, 
oaths, thefts, adulteries, murders, oppressions, contempt of religion, 
the open idolatries of Turks and heathens, the more spiritual and 
refined idolatries of others.2 Add to those, the ingratitude of those 
that profess his name, their pride, earthliness, carelessness, sluggish- 
ness to Divine duties, and in every one of those a multitude of 
provocations ; the whole man being engaged in every sin, the under- 
standing contriving it, the will embracing it, the affections comply- 
ing with it, and all the members of the body instruments in the 
acting the unrighteousness of it; every one of these faculties be- 
stowed upon men by him, are armed against him in every act: and 
in every employment of them there is a distinct provocation, though 
centred in one sinful end and object. What are the offences all the 

° Lessius, p. 152. 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. 499 


men of the world receive from their fellow-creatures, to the injuries 
God receives from men, but as a small dust of earth to the whole 
mass of earth and heaven too? What multitudes of sins is one 
profane wretch guilty of in the space of twenty, forty, fifty years ? 
Who can compute the vast number of his transgressions, from the 
first use of reason to the time of the separation of his soul from his 
body, from his entrance into the world to his exit? What are 
those, to those of a whole village of the like inhabitants? What 
are those, to those of a great city? Who can number up all the 
foul-mouthed oaths, the beastly excess, the goatish uncleanness, com- 
mitted in the space of a day, year, twenty years in this city, much 
less in the whole nation, least of all, in the whole world? ‘Were it 
no more than the common idolatry of former ages, when the whole 
world turned their backs upon their Creator, and passed him by to 
sue to a creature, a stock or stone, or a degraded spirit? How pro- 
voking would it be to a prince to see a whole city under his domin- 
ion deny him a respect, and pay it to his scullion, or the common 
executioner he employs! Add to this the unjust invasion of kings, 
the oppressions exercised upon men, all the private and public sins 
that have been in the world ever since it began. The Gentiles were 
described by the apostle (Rom. i. 29—81), in a black character, 
“They were haters of God ;” yet how did the “riches of his pa- 
tience” preserve multitudes of such disingenuous persons, and how 
“many millions of such haters of him” breathe every day in his 
air, and are maintained by his bounty, have their tables spread, and 
their cups filled to the brim, and that, too, in the midst of reiterated 
belchings of their enmity against him? All are under sufficient 
provocations of him to the highest indignation. The presiding 
angels over nations could not forbear, in love and honor to their 
governor, to arm themselves to the destruction of their several 
charges, if Divine patience did not set them a pattern, and their 
obedience incline them to expect his orders, before they act what 
their zeal would prompt them to. The devils would be glad of a 
commission to destroy the world, but that his patience puts a stop 
to their fury, as well as his own justice. 

(3.) Consider the long time of this patience. He spread out his 
hands “all the day” to a rebellious world (Isa. Ixv. 2). All men’s 
day, all God’s day, which is a “thousand years,” he hath borne 
with the gross of mankind, with all the nations of the world in a 
long succession of ages, for five thousand years and upwards already, 
and will bear with them till the time comes for the world’s dissolu- 
tion. He hath suffered the monstrous acts of men, and endured the 
contradictions of a sinful world against himself, from the first sin of 
Adam, to the last committed this minute. The line of his patience 
hath run along with the duration of the world to this day; and there 
is not any one of Adam’s posterity but hath been expensive to him, 
and partaken of the riches of it. 

(4.) All these he bears when he hath a sense of them. He sees 
every day the roll and catalogue of sin increasing ; he hath a distinct 
view of every one, from the sin of Adam to the last filled up in his 
omniscience ; and yet gives no order for the arrest of the world. He 


500 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


knows men fitted for destruction ; all the instants he exerciseth long: 
suffering towards them, which makes the apostle call it not simply 
long-suffering, without the addition of 7044, ‘“ much long-suffering” 
(Rom. ix. 23). There is not a grain in the whole mass of sin, that 
he hath not a distinct knowledge of, and of the quality of it. He 
perfectly understands the greatness of his own majesty that is vili- 
fied, and the nature of the offence that doth disparage him. He is — 
solicited by his justice, directed by his omniscience, and armed with 
judgments to vindicate himself, but his arm is restrained by patience. 
‘No conclude: no indignity is hid from him, no iniquity is beloved by 
him; the hatred of their sinfulness is infinite, and the knowledge of 
the malice is exact. The subsisting of the world under such weighty 
provocations, so numerous, SO long time, and with his full sense 
of every one of them, is an evidence of such a ‘forbearance and 
long-suffering,” that the addition of riches which the apostle puts 
to it (Rom. ii. 4), labors with an insufficiency clearly to display 1t. 

III. Why God doth exercise so much patience. | 

1. To show himself appeasable. God did not declare by his pa- 
-tience to former ages, or any age, that he was appeased with them, 
or that they were in his favor; but that he was appeasable, that 
he was not an implacable enemy, but that they might find him 
favorable to them, if they did seek after him. The continuance 
of the world by patience, and the bestowing many mercies by 
goodness, were not a natural revelation of the manner how he 
would be appeased: that was made known only by the prophets, 
and after the coming of Christ by the apostles; and had indeed 
been intelligible in some sort to the whole world, had there been 
a, faithfulness in Adam’s posterity, to transmit the tradition of the 
first promise to succeeding generations. Had not the knowledge 
of that died by their carelessness and neglect, it had been easy 
to tell the reason of God’s patience to be in order to the exhibition 
of the “Seed of the woman to bruise the serpent’s head.” They 
could not but naturally know themselves sinners, and worthy of 
death ; they might, by easy reflections upon themselves, collect that 
they were not in that comely and harmonious posture now, as they 
were when God first wrought them with his own finger, and placed 
them as his lieutenants in the world; they knew they did grievously 
offend him; this they were taught by the sprinklings of his judg- 
ments among them sometimes. And since he did not utterly root 
up mankind, his sparing patience was a prologue of some further 
favors, or pardoning grace to be displayed to the world by some 
methods of God yet unknown to them. Though the earth was 
something impaired by the curse after the fall, yet the main pillars 
of it stood; the state of the natural motions of the creature was not 
changed; the heavens remained in the same posture wherein they 
were created ; the sun, and moon, and other heavenly bodies, con- 
tinued their usefulness,and refreshing influences to man. 

The heavens did still “declare the glory of God, day unto day” 
did “utter speech ; their line is gone throughout all the earth, and 
their words to the end of the world” (Ps. xix. 1—4) : which declared. 
God to be willing to do good to his creatures, and were as sO many 


ON GOD’S PATIENCE. 501 


legible letters or rudiments, whereby they might read his patience, 
and that a further design of favor to the world lay hid in that pa- 
tience. Paul applies this to the preaching of the gospel (Rom. x. 
18): “Have they not heard the word of God? yes, verily, their 
sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the end of the 
world.” Redeeming grace could not be spelled out by them in a 
clear notion, but yet they did declare that which is the foundation 
of gospel mercy. Were not God patient, there were no room for a 
gospel mercy, so that the heavens declare the gospel, not formally, 
but fundamentally, in declaring the long-suffering of God, without 
which no gospel had been framed, or could have been expected. 
They could not but read in those things favorable inclinations to- 
wards them: and though they could not be ignorant that they de- 
served a mark of justice, yet seeing themselves supported by God, 
and beholding the regular motions of the heavens from day to day, 
and the revolutions of the seasons of the year, the natural conclu- 
sions they might draw from thence was, that God was placable ; 
since he behaved himself more as a tender friend, that had no mind 
to be at war with them, than an enraged enemy. ‘The good things 
which he gave them, and the patience whereby he spared them, 
were no arguments of an implacable disposition ; and, therefore, of 
a disposition willing to be appeased. This is clearly the design of 
the apostle’s arguing with the Lystrians, when they would have of- 
fered sacrifices to Paul (Acts, xiv. 17). When God “ suffered all na- 
tions to walk in their own ways, he did not leave himself without 
witness, giving rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons.” What were 
those witnesses of ? not only of the being of a God, by their readi- 
ness to sacrifice to those that were not gods, only supposed to be so 
in their false imaginations; but witnesses to the tenderness of God, 
that he had no mind to be severe with his creatures, but would 
allure them by ways ef goodness. Had not God’s patience tended 
to this end, to bring the world under another dispensation, the 
apostle’s arguing from it had not been suitable to his design, which 
seems to be a hindering the sacrifices they intended for them, and a 
drawing them to embrace the gospel, and therefore preparing the 
way to it, by speaking of the patience and goodness of God to them, 
as an unquestionable testimony of the reconcilableness of good to 
them, by some sacrifice which was represented under the common 
notion of sacrifices.e These things were not witnesses of Christ, or 
syllables whereby they could spell out the redeeming person; but 
witnesses that God was placable in his own nature. When man 
abused those noble faculties God had given him, and diverted them 
from the use and service God intended them for, God might have 
stripped man of them the first time that he misemployed them; and 
it would have seemed most agreeable to his wisdom and justice, not 
to suffer himself to be abused, and the world to go contrary to its 
natural end. But since he did not level the world with its first 
nothing, but healed the world so favorably, it was evident that his 
patience pointed the world to a further design of mercy and good- 
ness in him. To imagine that God had no other design in his long- 
P Amyrald, Dissert. pp. 191, 192. 


502 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


suffering but that of vengeance, had been a notion unsuitable to the 
goodness and wisdom of God. He would never have pretended 
himself to be a friend, if he had harbored nothing but enmity in his 
heart against them. It had been far from his goodness to give them 
a cause to suspect such a design in him, as his patience certainly did, 
had he not intended it. Had he preserved men only for punishment, 
it is more like he would have treated men as princes do those they 
reserve for the axe or halter, give them only things necessary to up- 
hold their lives till the day of execution, and not have bestowed 
upon them so many good things to make their lives delightful to 
them, nor have furnished them with so many excellent means to 
please their senses, and recreate their minds; it had been a mocking 
of them to treat them at that rate, if nothing but punishment had 
been intended towards them. If the end of it, to lead men to re- 
pentance, were easily intelligible by them, as the apostle intimates 
(Rom. ii. 4)—which is to be linked with the former chapter, a dis- 
course of the Gentiles: ‘‘ Not knowing,” saith he, “that the riches 
of his forbearance and goodness leads thee to repentance”—it also 
‘gives them some ground to hope for pardon. For what other argu- 
ment can more induce to repentance than an expectation of mercy 
upon a relenting, and acknowledging the crime? Without a design 
of pardoning grace, his patience would have been in a great mea- 
sure exercised in vain: for by mere patience God is not reconciled 
to a sinner, no more than a prince to a rebel, by bearing with him. 
Nor cana sinner conclude himself in the favor of God, no more than 
a rebel can conclude himself in the favor of his prince; only, this 
he may conclude, that there is some hopes he may have the grant 
of a pardon, since he hath time to sue it out. And so much did the 
patience of God naturally signify that he was of a reconcilable tem- 
per, and was willing men should sue out their pardon upon repent- 
ance; otherwise, he might have magnified his justice, and con- 
demned men by the law of works. 

(2.) He therefore exercised so much patience to wait for men’s 
repentance. All the notices and warnings that God gives men, of 
either public or personal calamities, is a contimual invitation to re- 
pentance. This was the common interpretation the heathens made 
of extraordinary presages and prodigies, which showed as well the 
delays as the approaches of judgments. What other notion but this, 
that those warnings of judgments witness a slowness to anger, and a 
willingness to turn his arrows another way, should move them to 
multiply sacrifices, go weeping to their temples, sound out prayers 
to their gods, and show all those other testimonies of a repentance 
which their blind understandings hit upon? If a prince should 
sometimes in a light and gentle manner punish a criminal, and then 
relax it, and show him much kindness, and afterwards inflict upon 
him another kind of punishment as light as the former, and less than 
was due to his crime, what could the malefactor suspect by such a 
way of proceeding, but that the prince, by those gently-repeated 
chastisements, had a mind to move him to a regret for his crime ?4 
And what other thoughts could men naturally have of God’s con- 

a Amyraldus, Moral. Tom. II. p. 186. 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. 503 


duct, that he should warn them of great judgments, send light 
afflictions, which are testimonies rather of a patience than of a severe 
wrath, but that it was intended to move them to a relenting, and a 
breaking off their sins by working righteousness? Though Divine 
patience does not, in the event, induce men to repentance, yet the 
natural tendency of such a treatment is to mollify men’s hearts, to 
overcome their obstinacy ; and no man hath any reason to judge 
otherwise of such a proceeding. The “long-suffering of God is sal- 
vation,” saith Peter (2 Pet. iii. 15), ¢. e. hath a tendency to salvation, 
in its being a solicitation of men to the means of it; for the apostle 
cites Paul for the confirmation of it,—‘' Even as our beloved brother, 
Paul, hath written unto you,” which must refer to Rom, u. 4: “ it 
leads to repentance,” ¢y«+, it conducts, which is more than barely to 
invite; it doth, as it were, take us by the hand, and point us to the 
way wherein we should go; and for this end it was exercised, not 
only towards the Jews, but towards the Gentiles, not only towards 
those that are within the pale of the church, and under the dews of 
the gospel, but to those that are in darkness, and in the shadow of 
death ; for this discourse of the apostle was but an inference from 
what he had treated of in the first chapter concerning the idolatry 
and ingratitude of the Gentiles; since the Gentiles were to be pun- 
ished for the abuse of it as well as the Jews, as he intimates, ver. 9. 
It is plain that his patience, which is exercised towards the idol- 
atrous Gentiles, was to allure them to repentance as well as others ; 
and it was a sufficient motive in itself to persuade them to a change 
of their vile and gross acts, to such as were morally good: and there 
was enough in God’s dealing with them, and in that light they had 
to engage them to a better course than what they usually walked in; 
and though men do abuse God’s long-suffering, to encourage their 
impenitence, and persisting in their crimes, yet that they cannot 
reasonably imagine that to be the end of God 1s evident; their own 
gripes of conscience would acquaint them that it is otherwise. They 
know that conscience is a principle that God hath given them, as well 
as understanding, and will, and other faculties; that God doth not 
approve of that which the voice of their own consciences, and of 
the consciences of all men under natural light, are utterly against: 
and if there were really, in this forbearance of God, an approbation 
of men’s crimes, conscience could not, frequently and universally in 
all men, check them for them. What authority could conscience 
have to do it? But this it doth in all men: as the apostle (Rom. 1. 
92), “They know the judgment of God, that those that do such 
things,” which he had mentioned before, “are worthy of death.” 
In this thing the consciences of all men cannot err: they could not, 
therefore, conclude from hence God’s approbation of their iniqui- 
ties, but his desire that their hearts should be touched with a repent- 
ance for them. The “sin of Ephraim is hid” (Hos. iit. by LAs 2.6. 
God doth not presently take notice of it, to order punishment; he 
lays it in a secret place from the eye of his justice, that Ephraim 
might not be his unwise son, and “stay long in the place of the 
breaking forth of children ;” 7. ¢. that he should speedily reclaim 
himself, and not continue in the way of destruction. God hath no 


504 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


need to abuse any; he doth not lie to the sons of men; if he would 
have men perish, he could easily destroy them, and have done it 
long ago: he did not leave the woman Jezebel in being, nor length- 
ened out her time, but as a space to repent (Rev. i. 21), that she _ 
might reflect upon her ways, and devote herself seriously to his ser- 

vice, and her own happiness. His patience stands between the 

offending creature and eternal misery a long time, that men might 

not foolishly throw away their souls, and be damned for their im- 

penitency ; by this he shows himself ready to receive men to mercy 

upon their return. To what purpose doth he invite men to repent- 

ance, if he intended to deceive them, and damn them after they 

repent ? . 

3. He doth exercise patience for the propagation of mankind. If 
God punished every sin presently, there would not only be a period 
put to churches, but to the world; without patience, Adam had sunk 
mto eternal anguish the first moment of his provocation, and the 
whole world of mankind, in his loins, had perished with him, and 
never seen the light. If this perfection had not interposed after the 
first sin, God had lost his end in the creation of the world, which he 
“created not in vain, but formed it to be inhabited” (Isa. xlv. 18). 
It had been inconsistent with the wisdom of God to make a world 
to be inhabited, and destroy it upon sin, when it had but two prin- 
cipal inhabitants in it; the reason of his making this earth had been» 
insignificant; he had not had any upon earth to glorify him, without 
erecting another world, which might have proved as sinful and as 
quickly wicked as this; God should have always been pulling down 
down and rearing up, creating and annihilating; one world would 
have come after another, as wave after wave in the sea. His patience 
stepped in to support the honor of God, and the continuance of men, 
without which one had been in part impaired, and the other totally 
lost. 

4. He doth exercise patience for the continuance of the church. 
If he be not patient toward sinners, what stock would there be for 
believers to spring up from? He bears with the provoking carriage 
of men, evil men, because out of their loins he intends to extract 
others, which he will form for the glory of his grace. He hath some 
unborn that belong to the election of grace, which are to be the seed 
of the worst of men; Jeroboam, the chief incendiary of the Israelites 
to idolatry, had an Abijah, in whom was found “some good thing 
towards the Lord God of Israel” (1 Kings, xiv. 13). Had Ahaz been 
snapped in the first act of his wickedness, the Israelites had wanted 
so good a prince and so good a man as Hezekiah, a branch of that 
wicked predecessor. What gardener cuts off the thorns from the 
rose-brush till he hath gathered the roses? and men do not use to 
burn all the crab-tree, but preserve a stock to engraft some sweet 
fruit upon. There could not have been a saint in the earth, nor, 
consequently, in heaven, had it not been for this perfection: he did 
not destroy the Israelites in the wilderness, that he might keep up a 
church among them, and not extinguish the whole seed that were 
heirs of the promises and covenant made with Abraham. Had God 
punished men for their sins as soon as they had been committed, 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. 505 


none would have lived to have been better, none could have con- 
tinued in the world to honor him by their virtues. Manasseh had 
never been a convert, and many brutish men had never been changed 
from beasts to angels, to praise and acknowledge their Creator. Had 
Peter received his due recompense upon the denial of his Master, he 
had never been a martyr for him; nor had Paul been a preacher of 
the gospel; nor any else: and so the gospel had not shined in any 
part of the world. No seed would have been brought into Christ; 
Christ is beholding immediately to this attribute for all the seed he 
hath in the world: it is for his name’s sake that he doth defer his 
anger; and for his praise that he doth refrain from “cutting us off” 
(Isa. xlviii. 9): and in the next chapter follows a prophecy of Christ. 
To overthrow mankind for sin, were to prevent the spreading a 
church in the world: a woman that is guilty of a capital crime, and 
lies under a condemning sentence, is reprieved from execution for 
her being with child; it is for the child’s sake the woman is respited, 
not for her own: it is for the elect’s sake, in the loins of transgressors, 
that they are a long time spared, and not for their own (Isa. lxv. 
8): “ As the new wine is found in a cluster, and one saith, De- 
stroy it not, for a blessing is in it, so will I do for my servants’ sakes, 
that I may not destroy them all ;” as a husbandman spares a vine for 
some good clusters in it. He had spoke of vengeance before, yet 
he would reserve some from whom he would bring forth those that 
should be ‘inheritors of his mountains,” that he might make up his 
church of Judea; Jerusalem being a mountainous place, and the type 
of the church in all ages. What is the reason he doth not level his 
thunder at the heads of those for whose destruction he receives so 
many petitions from the “souls under the altar?” (Rev. vi. 9, 10). 
Because God had others to write a testimony for him in their own 
blood, and perhaps out of the loins of those for whom vengeance 
was so earnestly supplicated; and God, as the master of a vessel, 
lies patiently at anchor, till the last passenger he expects be taken in." 

5. For the sake of his church he is patient to wicked men. The 
tares are patiently endured till the harvest, for fear in the plucking 
up the one, there might be some prejudice done to the other. Upon 
this account he spares some, who are worse than others whom he 
crusheth by signal judgments: the Jews had committed sins worse | 
than Sodom, for the confirmation of which we have God’s oath 
(Ezek. xvi. 48); and more by half than Samaria, or the ten tribes 
had done (ver 51): yet God spared the Jews, though he destroyed 
the Sodomites. What was the reason, but a larger remnant of right- 
eous persons, more clusters of good grapes, were found among them 
than grew in Sodom? (Isa. i. 9). A few more righteous in Sodom had 
damped the fire and brimstone designed for that place, and a “rem- 
nant of such in Judea” was a bar to that fierceness of anger, which 
otherwise would have quickly consumed them, Had there been but 
“ten righteous in Sodom,” Divine patience had still bound the arms 
of Justice, that it should not have prepared its brimstone, notwith- 
standing the clamor of the sins of the multitude. Judea was ripe 
for the sickle, but God would put a lock upon the torrent of his 

r Smith on the Creed, p. 404. 


506 | CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


judgments, that they should not flow down upon that wicked place, 
to make them a desolation and a curse, as long as tender-hearted 
Josiah lived, ‘who had humbled himself” at the threatening, and 
wept before the Lord (1 Kings, xxii. 19, 20). Sometimes he bears 
with wicked men, that they might exercise the patience of the saints 
(Rev. xiv. 12): the whole time of the “forbearance of antichrist” in 
all his intrusions into the temple of God, invasions of the rights of 
God, usurpations of the office of Christ, and besmearing himself with 
the blood of the saints, was to give them an opportunity of patience. 
God is patient towards the wicked, that by their means he might try 
the righteous. He burns not the wisp till he hath scoured his ves- 
sels; nor lays by the hammer, till he hath formed some of his matter 
into an excellent fashion. He useth the worst men as rods to correct 
his people, before he sweeps the twigs out of his house. God some- 
times uses the thorns of the world, as a hedge to secure his church, 
sometimes as instruments to try and exercise it. Howsoever he useth 
them, whether for security or trial, he is patient to them for his 
church’s advantage. 

6. When men are not brought to repentance by his patience, he 
doth longer exercise it, to manifest the equity of his future justice 
upon them. As wisdom is justified by her obedient children, so is 
justice justified by the rebels against patience; the contempt of the 
latter is the justification of the former. The “apostles were unto 
God a sweet savor of Christ in them that perish,” as well as in 
them that were saved by the acceptation of their message (2 Cor. 11. 
15). Both are fragrant to God; his mercy is glorified by the one’s 
acceptance of it, and his justice freed from any charge against it by 
the other’s refusal. The cause of men’s ruin cannot be laid upon 
God, who provided means for their salvation, and solicited their 
compliance with him. What reason can they have to charge the 
Judge with any wrong to them, who reject the tenders he makes, 
and who hath forborne them with so much patience, when he might 
have censured them by his righteous justice, upon the first crime 
they committed, or the first refusal of his gracious offers? “‘ Quanto 
Dei magis judicium tardum est tanto magis justum.”s After the despis- 
ing of patience, there can be no suspicion of an irregularity in the 
- acts of justice. Man hath no reason to fall foul in his charge upon 
God, if he were punished for his own sin, considering the dignity 
of the injured person, and the meanness of himself, the offender; but 
his wrath is more justified when it is poured out upon those whom 
he hath endured with much long-suffering. There is no plea against 
the shooting of his arrows into those, for whom this voice hath been 
loud, and his arms open for their return. As patience, while it is 
exercised, is the silence of his justice, so when it is abused, it silenc- 
eth men’s complaints against his justice. The ‘riches of his forbear- 
ance” made way for the manifesting the ‘‘treasures of his wrath.” 
If God did but a little bear with the insolencies of men, and cut them 
off after two or three sins, he would not have opportunity to show 
either the power of his patience, or that of his wrath; but when he 
hath a right to punish for one sin, and yet bears with them for many, 

* Minue. Felix, p. 41. 


ON GOD’S PATIENCE. 507 


and they will not be reclaimed, the sinner is more inexcusable, 
Divine justice less chargeable, and his wrath more powerful. (Rom. 
ix. 22), ‘‘ What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his 
power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath 
fitted for destruction?” The proper and immediate end of his long- 
suffering is to lead men to repentance; but after they have by their 
obstinacy fitted themselves for destruction, he bears longer with 
them, to ‘magnify his wrath” more upon them; and if it is not the 
ints operantis, it is at least the finis operis, where patience is abused. 
Men are apt to complain of God, that he deals hardly with them; 
the Israelites seem to charge God with too much severity, to cast 
them off, when so many promises were made to the fathers for their 
perpetuity and preservation, which is intimated, Hos. ii. 2.“ Plead 
with your mother, plead:” by the double repetition of the word 
“nlead ;” do not accuse me of being false or too rigorous, but accuse 
your mother, your church, your magistracy, your ministry, for their 
spiritual fornications which have provoked me; for their -55x:, 
intimating the greatness of their sins by the reduplication of the 
word, “lest I strip her naked.” I have borne with her under many 
provocations, and I have not yet taken away all her ornaments, or 
said to her, according to the rule of divorce, Les tuas tibt habeto. God 
answers their impudent charge: ‘She is not my wife, nor am I her 
husband ;” he doth not say first, I am not her husband, but she is 
not my wife; she first withdrew from her duty by breaking the 
marriage covenant, and then I ceased to be her husband. No man 
shall be condemned, but he shall be convinced of the due desert of 
his sin, and the justice of God’s proceeding. God will lay open 
men’s guilt, and repeat the measures of his patience to justify the 
severity of his wrath (Hos. vii. 10), ‘‘Sins will testify to their face.” 
What is in its own nature a preparation for glory, men by their ob- 
stinacy make a preparation for a more indisputable punishment. 
We see many evidences of God’s forbearance here, in sparing men 
under those blasphemies which are audible, and those profane car- 
riages which are visible, which would sufficiently justify an act of 
severity ; yet when men’s secret sins, both in heart and action, and the 
vast multitude of them, far surmounting what can arrive to our knowl- 
edge here, shall be discovered, how great a lustre will it add to God’s 
bearing with them, and make his justice triumph without any rea- 
sonable demur from the sinner himself! He is long-suffering here, 
that his justice may be more public hereafter. 

Use IV. For instruction. How is this patience of God abused! 
The Gentiles abused those testimonies of it, which were written in 
showers and fruitful seasons. No nation was ever stripped of it, 
under the most provoking idolatries, till after multiplied spurns at it: 
not a person among us but hath been guilty of the abuse of it. How 
have we contemned that which demands a reverence from us! How 
have we requited God’s waitings with rebellions, while he hath con- 
tinued urging and expecting our return! Saul relented at David’s 
forbearing to revenge himself, when he had his prosecuting and in- 
dustrious enemy in his power. (1 Sam. xxiv. 17), “Thou art more 
righteous than I; thou hast rewarded me good, whereas I have re- 


508 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


warded thee evil :” and shall we not relent at God’s wonderful long- 
suffering, and silencing his anger so much? He could puff away 
our lives, but he will not, and yet we endeavor to strip him of his 
being, though we cannot. 

1. Let us consider the ways, how slowness to anger is abused. 

(1.) It is abused by misinterpretations of it, when men slander his 
patience to be only a carelessness and neglect of his providence ; as 
Averroes argued from his slowness to anger, a total neglect of the 
government of the lower world: or when men from his long-suffer- 
ing charge him with impurity, as if his patience were a consent to 
their crimes; and because he suffered them, without calling them to 
account, he were one of their partisans, and as wicked as themselves 
(Ps. 1. 21): “ Because I kept silence, thou thoughtest I was altogether 
such a one as thyself.” His silence makes them conclude him to be 
an abettor of, and a consort in their sins; and think him more 
pleased with their iniquity than their obedience. Or when they will 
infer from his forbearance a want of his omniscience; because he 
suffers their sins, they imagine he forgets them (Ps. x. 11): “He 
hath said in his heart, God hath forgotten:” thinking his patience 
proceeds not from the sweetness of his nature, but a weakness of his 
mind. How base is it, instead of admitting him, to disparage him 
for it; and because he stands in so advantageous a posture towards 
us, not to own the choicest prerogatives of his Deity! This is to 
make a perfection, so useful to us, to shadow and extinguish those 
others, which are the prime flowers of his crown. 

(2.) His patience is abused by continuing in a course of sin under 
the influences of it. How much is it the practical language of men, 
Come, let us commit this or that iniquity; since Divine patience 
hath suffered worse than this at our hands! Nothing is remitted to 
their sensual pleasures, and eagerness in them. How often did the 
Israelites repeat their murmurings against him, as if they would put 
his patience to the utmost proof, and see how far the line of it could 
extend! They were no sooner satisfied in one thing, but they quar- 
relled with him about another, as if he had no other attribute to put 
in motion against them. They tempted him as often as he relieved 
them, as though the declaration of his name to Moses (Exod. xxxiv.), 
“to be a God gracious, and long-suffering,” had been intended for no 
other purpose but a protection of them in their rebellions. Such a 
sort of men the prophet speaks of,.that were “settled in their lees,” 
or dregs (Zeph. i. 12): they were congealed, and frozen in their suc- 
cessful wickedness. Such an abuse of Divine patience is the very 
dregs of sin; God chargeth it highly upon the Jews (Isa. lvu. 11): 
‘“T have held my peace, even of old, and thou fearest me not;” my 
silence made thee confident, yea, impudent in thy sin. 

(8.) His patience is abused by repeating sin, after God hath, by an 
act of his patience, taken off some affliction from men. As metals 
melted in the fire remain fluid under the operations of the flames, yet 
when removed from the fire, they quickly return to their former 
hardness, and sometimes grow harder than they were before; so men 
who, in their afflictions, seem to be melted, like Ahab confess their 
sins, lie prostrate before God, and seek him early; yet, if they be 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. 509 


brought from under the power of their afflictions, they return to 
their old nature, and are as stiff against God, and resist the blows of 
the Spirit as much as they did before. They think they have a new 
stock of patience to sin upon. Pharaoh was somewhat thawed un- 
der judgments, and frozen again under forbearance (Hxod. ix. 27, 84). 
Many will howl when God strikes them, and laugh at him when he 
forbears them. Thus that patience which should melt us, doth often 
harden us, which is not an effect natural to his patience, but natural 
to our abusing corruption. 

(4.) His patience is abused, by taking encouragement from it to 
mount to greater degrees of sin. Because God is slow to anger, men 
are more fierce in sin, and not only continue in their old rebellions, 
but heap new upon them. If he spare them for three transgressions, 
they will commit four, as is intimated in the first and second of 
Amos; “Men’s hearts are fully set in them to do evil, because sen- 
tence against an evil work is not speedily executed” (Hecles. viii. iT: 
Their hearts are more desperately bent; before they had some 
waverings, and pull-backs, but after a fair sunshine of Divine pa- 
tience, they entertain more unbridled resolutions, and pass forward 
with more liberty and licentiousness. They make his long-suffering 
subservient to turn out all those little relentings and regrets they 
had before, and banish all thoughts of barring out a temptation. No 
encouragement is given to men by God's patience, but they force it 
by their presumption. They invert God’s order, and bind themselves 
stronger to iniquity by that which should bind them faster to their 
duty. A happy escape at sea makes men go more confidently into 
the deeps- afterward. Thus we deal with God as debtors do with 
good-natured creditors: because they do not dun them for what they 
owe, they take encouragement to run more upon the score, till the 
sum amounts above their ability of payment. | 

But let it be considered, 1st. That this abuse of patience is a high 
sin. As every act of forbearance obligeth us to duty, so every act 
of it abused, increaseth our guilt. The more frequent its solicita- 
tions of us have been, the deeper ageravations our sin receives by it. 
Every sin, after an act of Divine patience, contracts a blacker guilt. 
The sparing us after the last sin we committed, was a superadded act 
of long-suffering, and a laying out more of his riches upon us: and, 
therefore, every new act committed is a despite against greater riches 
expended, and greater cost upon us, and against his preserving us 
from the hand of justice for the last transgression. It is disingenuous 
not to have a due resentment of so much goodness, and base to in- 
jure him the more, because he doth not right himself. Shall he re- 
ceive the more wrongs from us, by how much the sweeter he is to 
us? No man’s conscience but will tell him it is vile to prefer the 
satisfaction of a sordid lust, before the counsel of a God of so gra- 
cious a disposition. The sweeter the nature, the fouler is the injury 
that is done unto it. 2d. It is dangerous to abuse his patience. 
Contempt of kindness is most irksome to an ingenuous spirit; and 
he is worthy to have the arrows of God’s indignation lodged in his 
heart, who despiseth the riches of his long-suffering. For, 

[1.] The time of patience will have an end. Though his Spirit 


510 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


strives with man, yet it shall ‘not always strive” (Gen. vi. 3). Though 
there be a time wherein Jerusalem might ‘know the things that con- 
cerned her peace,” yet there is another period wherein they should — 
be “hid from her eyes” (Luke xix. 48): -‘O that thou hadst known 
in this thy day!” Nations have their day, and persons have their 
day; and the day of most persons is shorter than the day of nations. 
Jerusalem had her day of forty years; but how many particular 
persons were taken off before the last or middle hours of that day 
were arrived! ‘“ Forty years was God grieved” with the generation 
of the Israelites (Heb. 1.11). One carcass dropped after another in 
that limited time, and at the end not a man but fell under the judi- 
cial stroke, except Caleb and Joshua. One hundred and twenty 
years was the term set to the mass of the old world, but not to every 
man in the old world ; some fell while the ark was preparing, as well 
as the whole stock when the ark was completed. ‘Though he be pa- 
tient with most, yet he is not in the same degree with all; every sin- 
ner hath his time of sinning, beyond which he shall proceed no fur- 
ther, be his lusts never so impetuous, and his affections never so im- 
perious. The time of his patience is, in Scripture, set forth some- 
times by years; three years he came to find fruit on the fig-tree: 
sometimes by days ; some men’s sins are sooner ripe, and fall. There 
is a measure of sin (Jer. ii. 13), which is set forth by the ephah 
(Zech. v. 8), which, when it is filled, is sealed up, and a weight of 
lead cast upon the mouth of it. When judgments are preparing, 
once and twice the Lord is prevailed with by the intercession of the 
prophet : the prepared grass-hoppers are not sent to devour, and the 
kindled fire is not blown up to consume (Amos, vil. 1—8). But at 
last God takes the plumb-line, to suit and measure punishment to 
their sin, and would not pass by them any more; and when their 
sin was ripe, represented by a “‘ basket of summer-fruit,” God would 
withhold his hand no longer, but brought such a day upon them, 
wherein ‘“‘the songs of the Temple should be howlings, and dead 
bodies be in every place” (Amos, viil. 2, 3)., He lays by any further 
thoughts of patience to speed their ruin. God had borne long with 
the Israelites, and long it was before he gave them up. He would 
first brake the ‘‘ bow in Jezreel” (Hos. i. 5); take away the strength 
of the nation by the death of Zechariah, the last of Jehu’s race, which 
introduced civil dissentions and ambitious murders, for the throne, 
whereby in weakening one part they weakened the whole; or, as 
some think, alluding to Tiglah Pilezar, who carried captive two 
tribes and a half. If this would not reclaim them, then follows 
‘“Lo-ruhamah, I will not have mercy,” I will sweep them out of the 
land (ver. 6). If they did not repent, they should be “ Lo-ammi” 
(ver. 9), ‘You are not my people,” and “I will not be your God.” 
They should be discovenanted, and stripped of all federal relation. 
Here patience forever withdrew from them, and wrathful anger took 
its place. And, for particular persons, the time of life, whether 
shorter or longer, is the only time of long-suffering. It hath no other 
stage than the present state of things to act upon; there is none else 
to be expected after but giving account of what hath been done in 
the body, not of anything done after the soul is fled from the body: 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. 51l 


the time of patience ends with the first moment of the soul’s depar- 
ture from the body. This time only is the “day of salvation ;” 2. e. 
the day wherein God offers it, and the day wherein God waits for 
our acceptance of it: it is at his pleasure to shorten or lengthen our 
day, not at ours; it is not our long-suffering, but his; he hath the 
command of it. 

[2.] God hath wrath to punish, as well as patience to bear. He 
hath a fury to revenge the outrages done to his meekness : when his 
messages of peace, sent to reclaim men, are slighted, his sword shall 
be whetted, and his instruments of war prepared (Hos. y. 3): “ Blow 
ye the cornet in Gibeah, and the trumpet in Ramah.” As he deals 
gently, like a father, so he can punish capitally as a judge: though 
he holds his peace for a long time, yet at last he will go forth like a 
mighty man, and stir up jealousy, as a man of war, to cut in pieces 
his enemies, It isnot said he hath no anger, but that he is “slow to 
anger,” but sharp in it: he hath a sword to cut, and a bow to shoot, 
and arrows to pierce (Ps. xii. 18): though he be long drawing the 
one out of its scabbard, and long fitting the other to his bow, yet, 
when they are ready, he strikes home, and hits the mark: though he 
hath a time of patience, yet he hath also a “day of rebuke” (Hos. 
vy. 9); though patience overrules justice, by suspending it, yet justice 
will at last overrule patience, by an utter silencing it. God is J udge 
of the whole earth to right men, yet he is no less Judge of the inju- 
ries he receives to right himself. Though God awhile was pressed 
with the murmurings of the Israelites, after their coming out of Egypt, 
and seemed desirous to give them all satisfaction upon their unwor- 
thy complaints, yet, when they came to open hostility, in setting a 

olden calf in his throne, he commissions the ‘ Levites to kill every 
man his brother and companion in the camp” (Exod. xxxii. 27): and 
how desirous soever he was to content them before, they never mur- 
mured afterwards but they severely smarted for it. When once he 
hath begun to use his sword, he sticks 1t up naked, that it might be 
ready for use upon every occasion. Though he hath feet of lead, yet 
he hath hands of iron. It was long that he supported the peevish- 
ness of the Jews, but at last he captived them by the arms of the 
Babylonians, and laid them waste by the power of the Romans. He 
planted, by the apostles, churches in the east; and when his good- 
ness and long-suffering prevailed not with them, he tore them up by 
the roots. What Christians are to be found in those once famous parts 
of Asia but what are overgrown with much error and ignorance? 

[3.] The more his patience is abused, the sharper will be the wrath 
he inflicts. As his wrath restrained makes his patience long, so his 
compassions restrained will make his wrath severe ; as he doth tran- 
scend all creatures in the measures of the one, so he doth transcend 
all creatures in the sharpness of the other. Christ is described with 
“fact of brass,” asif they burned in a furnace (Rev. i. 15), slow to move, 
but heavy to crush, and hot to burn. His wrath loseth nothing 
by delay ; it grows the fresher by sleeping, and strikes with greater 
strength when it awakes: all the time men are abusing his patience, 
God is whetting his sword, and the longer it is whetting the sharper 
will be the edge; the longer he is fetching his blow, the smarter it 


512 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


will be. The heavier the cannons are, the more difficultly are they 
drawn to the besieged town; but, when arrived, they recompense 
the slowness of their march by the fierceness of their battery. “ Be- 
cause I have purged thee,” 7. ¢. used means for thy reformation, and 
waited for it, “and thou wast not purged, thou shalt not be purged 
from thy filthiness any more, till I have caused my fury to rest upon 
thee : I will not go back, neither will I spare ; according to thy ways, 
and according to thy doings, shall they judge thee” (Ezek. xxiv. 18, 
14). God will spare as little then as he spared much before ; his 
wrath shall be as raging upon them as the sea of their wickedness 
was within them. When there is a bank to forbid the irruption of 
the streams, the waters swell; but when the bank is broke, or the 
lock taken away, they rush with the greater violence, and ravage 
more than they would have done had they not met with a stop: the 
longer a stone is in falling, the more it bruiseth and grinds to pow- 
der. There is a greater treasure of wrath laid up by the abuses of 
patience : every sin must have a just recompense of reward ; and 
therefore every sin, ii regard of its aggravations, must be more pun- 
ished than a sin in the singleness and simplicity of its own nature. 
As treasures of mercy are kept by God for us, “he keeps mercy for 
thousands ;” so are treasures of wrath kept by him to be expended, 
and a time of expense there must be: patience will account to jus- 
tice all the good offices it hath done the sinner, and demand to be 
righted by justice ; justice will take the account from the hands of 
patience, and exact a recompense for every disingenuous injury of- 
fered to it. When justice comes to arrest men for their debts, pa- 
tience, mercy, and goodness, will step in as creditors, and clap their 
actions upon them, which will make the condition so much more 
deplorable. 

[4.] When he puts an end to his abused patience, his wrath will 
make quick and sure work. He that is “slow to anger” will be 
swift in the execution of it. The departure of God from Jerusalem 
is described with “ wings and wheels” (Ezek. xi. 23). One stroke of 
his hand is irresistible; he that hath spent so much time in waiting 
needs but one minute to ruin; though it be long ere he draws his. 
sword out of his scabbard, yet, when once he doth it, he despatcheth 
men ata blow. Hphraim, or the ten tribes, had a long time of pa- 
tience and prosperity, but now shall a “month devour him with his 
portion” (Hos. v. 7). One fatal month puts a period to the many 
years’ peace and security of a sinful nation; his arrows wound sud- 
denly (Ps. lxiv. 7); and while men are about to fill their bellies, he 
casts the fruits of his wrath upon them (Job, xx. 23), like thunder 
out of a cloud, or a bullet out of a cannon, that strikes dead before it 
is heard. God deals with sinners as enemies do with a town, batter 
it not by planted guns, but secretly undermines and blows up the 
walls, whereby they involve the garrison in a sudden ruin, and carry 
the town. God spared the Amalekites a long time after the injury 
committed against the Israelites, in their passage out of Egypt to Ca- 
naan ; but when he came to reckon with them, he would waste them 
in a trice, and make an utter consumption of them (1 Sam. xv. 2, 8). 
He describes himself by a “‘travailing woman” (Isa. xxiv. 14), that 


ON GOD’S PATIENCE. 513 


hath borne long in her womb, and at last sends forth her birth with 
strong cries. Though he hath held his peace, been still, and refrained 
himself, yet, at last, he will destroy and devour at once: the Nine- 
vites, spared in the time of Jonah for their repentance, are, in nature, 
threatened with a certain and total ruin, when God should come to 
bring them to an account for his length and patience, so much abused 
by them. Though God endured the murmuring Israelites so long in 
_ the wilderness, yet he paid them off at last, and took away the reb- 
els in his wrath: he uttered their sentence with an irreversible oath, 
that “none of them should enter into his rest ;” and he did as surely 
execute it as he had solemnly sworn it. 

[5.] Though he doth defer his visible wrath, yet that very delay 
may be more dreadful than a quick punishment. He may forbear 
striking, and give the reins to the hardness and corruption of men’s 
hearts; he may suffer them to walk in their own counsels, without 
any more striving with them, whereby they make themselves fitter 
fuel for his vengeance. This was the fate of Israel when they would 
not hearken to his voice; he “gave them up to their own hearts’ 
lusts, and they walked in their own counsels” (Ps. lxxxi. 12). 
Though his sparing them had the outward aspect of patience, it was 
a wrathful one, and attended with spiritual judgments; thus man 
abusers of patience may still have their line lengthened, and the 
candle of prosperity to shine upon their heads, that they may in- 
crease their sins, and be the fitter mark at last for his arrows; they 
swim down the stream of their own sensuality with a deplorable se- 
curity, till they fall into an unavoidable gulf, where, at last, it will 
be a great part of their hell to reflect on the length of Divine pa- 
tience on earth, and their inexcusable abuse of it. 

2. It informs us of the reason why he lets the enemies of his 
church oppress it, and defers his promise of the deliverance of it. 
If he did punish them presently, his holiness and justice would be 
glorified, but his power over himself in his patience would be ob- 
scured. Well may the church be content to have a perfection of 
God glorified, that is not like to receive any honor in another world 
by any exercise of itself’ If it were not for this patience, he were 
incapable to be the Governor of a sinful world; he might, without 
it, be the Governor of an innocent world, but not of a criminal one; 
he would be the destroyer of the world, but not the orderer and dis- 
poser of the extravagancies and sinfulness of the world. The in- 
terest of his wisdom, in drawing good out of evil, would not be 
served, if he were not clothed with this perfection as well as with 
others. If he did presently destroy the enemies of his church upon 
the first oppression, his wisdom in contriving, and his power in 
accomplishing deliverance against the united powers of hell and 
earth, would not be visible, no, nor that power in preserving his 
people unconsumed in the furnace of affliction. He had not got so 
ereat a name in the rescue of his Israel from Pharaoh, had he thun- 
dered the tyrant into destruction upon his first edicts against the 
innocent. If he were not patient to the most violent of men, he 
might seem to be cruel. But when he offers peace to them un- 
der their rebellions, waits that they may be members of his church, 

VOL. I1.—33 


514 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. . 


rather than enemies to it, he frees himself from any such impu- 
tation, even in the judgment of those that shall feel most of his 
wrath; it is this renders the equity of his justice unquestionable, 
and the deliverance of his people righteous in the judgment of 
those from whose fetters they are delivered. Christ reigns in the 
midst of his enemies, to show his power over himself, as well as 
over the heads of his enemies, to show his power over his re- 
bels. And though he retards his promise, and suffers a great in- 
terval of time between the publication and performance, sometimes 
years, sometimes ages to pass away, and little appearance of any 
preparation, to show himself a God of truth; it is not that he hath 
forgotten his word, or repents that ever he passed it, or sleeps in a 
supine neglect of it: but that men might not perish, but bethink 
themselves, and come as friends into his bosom, rather than be 
crushed as enemies under his feet (2 Pet. iii. 9): “The Lord is not 
slack concerning his promise, but is long-suffering to us-ward, not 
willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repent- 
ance.” Hereby he shows, that he would be rather pleased with the 
‘conversion, than the destruction, of men. 

3. We see the reason why sin is suffered to remain in the regene- 
rate; to show his patience towards his own; for since this attribute 
hath no other place of appearance but in this world, God takes op- 
portunity to manifest it; because, at the close of the world, it will 
remain closed up in the Deity, without any further operation. As 
God suffers a multitude of sins in the world, to evidence his pa- 
tience to the wicked, so he suffers great remainders of.sin in his 
people, to show his patience to the godly. His sparing mercy is ad- 
mirable, before their conversion, but more admirable in bearing with 
them after so high an obligation as the conferring upon them special 
converting grace. 

Use2. Of comfort. It is a vast comfort to any when God is paci- 
fied towards them; but it is some comfort to all, that God is yet pa- 
tient towards them, though but very little to a refractory sinner. 
His continued patience to all, speaks a posstbility of the care of all, 
would they not stand against the way of their recovery. Itisa 
terror that God hath anger, but it is a mitigation of that terror that 
God is slow to it; while his sword is in his sheath there is some 
hopes to prevent the drawing of it: alas! if he were all fire and 
sword upon sin, what would become of us? We should find no- 
thing else but overflowing deluges, or sweeping pestilences, or per- 
petual flashes of Sodom’s fire and brimstone from heaven. He dooms 
us not presently to execution, but gives us a long breathing time 
after the crime, that by retiring from our iniquities, and having re- 
course to his mercy, he may be withheld forever from signing a war- 
rant against us, and change his legal sentence into an evangelical 
pardon. It is a special comfort to his people, that he is a ‘“‘sanc- 
tuary to them” (Hzek. xi. 16); a place of refuge, a place of spiritual 
communications; but it is some refreshment to all in this life, that 
he is a defence to them: for so is his patience called (Numb. xiv. 
9): “Their defence is departed from them;” speaking to the 
Israelites, that they should not be afraid of the Canaanites, for 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. 515 


their defence is departed from them. God is no longer patient to 
them, since their sins be full and ripe. Patience, as long as it lasts, 
is a temporary defence to those that are under the wing of it; but 
to the believer it is a singular comfort; and God is called the ‘God 
of patience and consolation” in one breath (Rom. xv. 5): “The God 
of patience and consolation grant you to be like-minded ;” all interpre- 
ters understand it effectively. The God that inspires you with pa- 
tience, and cheers you with comfort, grant this to you. Why may 
it not be understood formally, of the patience belonging to the na- 
ture of God? and though it be expressed in the way of petition, 
yet it might also be proposed as a pattern for imitation, and so 
suits very well to the exhortation laid down (ver. 1), which was 
to “bear with the infirmities of the weak,” which he presseth 
them to (ver. 8) by the example of Christ; and (ver. 5) by the pa- 
tience of God to them, and so they are very well linked together. 
“God of patience and consolation” may well be joined, since pa- 
tience is the first step of comfort to the poor creature. If it did 
not administer some comfortable hopes to Adam, in the interval 
between his fall and God’s coming to examine him, I am sure it 
was the first discovery of any comfort to the creature, after the 
sweeping the destroying deluge out of the world (Gen. ix. 21); 
after the “savor of Noah’s sacrifice,” representing the great Sac- 
rifice which was to be in the world, had ascended up to God, 
the return from him is a publication of his forbearing to punish 
any more in such a manner: and though he found man no bet- 
ter than he was before, and the imaginations of men’s hearts as 
evil as before the deluge, that he would not again smite every 
living thing, as he had done. ‘This was the first expression of 
comfort to Noah, after his exit fromt the ark; and declares no- 
thing else but the continuance of patience to the new world 
above what he had shown to the old. 

1. It is a comfort, in that it is an argument of his grace to his peo- 
ple. If he hath so rich a patience to exercise towards his enemies, 
he hath a greater treasure to bestow upon his friends. Patience is 
the first attribute which steps in for our salvation, and therefore 
called “salvation” (2 Pet. 11. 15). Something else is therefore built 
upon it, and intended by it, to those that believe. Those two letters 
of his name, “a God keeping mercy for thousands, and forgiving 
iniquity, transgressions and sin,” follow the other letter of his long- 
suffering in the proclamation (Exod. xxxiy. 6, 7). He is “slow to 
anger,” that he may be merciful, that men may seek, and receive 
their pardon. If he be long-suffering, in order to be a pardoning 
God, he will not be wantiig in pardoning those who answer the de- 
sign of his forbearance of them. You would not have had sparing 
mercy to improve, if God would have denied you saving mercy upon 
the improvement of his sparing goodness. If he hath so much re- 
spect to his enemies that provoke him, as to endure them with much 
long-suffering, he will surely be very kind to those that obey him, 
and conform to his will. If he hath much long-suffering to those 
that are “fitted for destruction” (Rom. ix. 22), he will have a much- 
ness of mercy for those that are prepared for glory by faith and re- 


516 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


pentance. It is but a natural conclusion a gracious soul may make, 
—If God had not a mind to be appeased towards me, he would not 
have had a mind to forbear me; but since he hath forborne me, and 
given me a heart to see, and answer the true end of that forbearance, 
I need not question, but that sparing mercy will end in saving, since 
it finds that repentance springimg up in me, which that patience con- 
ducted me to. 

2. His patience is a ground to trust in his promise. If his slow- 
ness to anger be so great when his precept is slighted, his readiness 
to give what he hath promised will be as great when his promise is 
believed. If the provocations of them meet with such an unwill- 
ingness to punish them, faith in him will meet with the choicest 
embraces from him. He was more ready to make the promise of 
redemption after man’s apostasy, than to execute the threatening of 
the law. He doth still witness a greater willingness to give forth the 
fruits of the promise, than to pour out the vials of his curses. His 
slowness to anger is an evidence still, that he hath the same disposi- 
tion, which is no slight cordial to faith in his word. 

_ 8. It is a comfort in infirmities. If he were not patient, he could 
not bear with so many peevishnesses and weaknesses in the hearts 
of his own. If he be patient to the grosser sins of his enemies, he 
will be no less to the lighter infirmities of his people. When the 
soul is a bruised reed, that can emit no sound at all, or one very 
barsh and ungrateful, he doth not break it in pieces, and fling it 
away in disdain, but waits to see whether it will fully answer his 
pains, and be brought to a better frame and sweeter note. He brings 
them not to account for every slip, but, ‘‘as a father, spares his son 
that serves him” (Mal. iii. 17). It 1s a comfort to us in our distracted 
services; for were it not for his slowness to anger, he would stifle us 
in the midst of our prayers, wherein there are as many foolish thoughts 
to disoust him, as there are petitions to implore him. The patientest 
angels would hardly be able to bear with the follies of good men in 
acts of worship. 

Use 8. For exhortation. 

1. Meditate often on the patience of God. The devil labors for 
nothing more than to deface in us the consideration and memory of 
this perfection. He isan envious creature; and since it hath reached 
out itself to us and not to him, he envies God the glory of it, and 
man the advantage of it: but God loves to have the volumes of it 
studied, and daily turned over by us. We cannot without an inex- 
cusable wilfulness miss the thoughts of it, since it is visible in every 
bit of bread, and breath of air in ourselves, and all about us. 

(1.) The frequent consideration of his patience would render God 
highly amiable to us. It is a more endearing argument than his mere 

oodness; his goodness to us as creatures, endowing us with such ex- 
cellent faculties, furnishing us with such a commodious world, and 
bestowing upon us so many attendants for our pleasure and service, 
and giving us a lordship over his other works, deserves our affection : 
but his patience to us as sinners, after we have merited the greatest 
wrath, shows him to be of a sweeter disposition than creating good- 
ness to unoffending creatures; and, consequently, speaks a greater 


ON GOD’S PATIENCE. 517 


love in him, and bespeaks a greater affection from us. His creating 
goodness discovered the majesty of his Being, and the greatness of 
his mind, but this the sweetness and tenderness of his nature. In 
this patience he exceeds the mildness of all creatures to us; and 
therefore should be enthroned in our affections above all other crea- 
tures. The consideration of this would make us affect him for his 
nature as well as for his benefits. 

(2.) The consideration of his patience would make us frequent and 
serious in the exercise of repentance. In its nature it leads to it, and 
the consideration of it would engage us to it, and melt us in the ex- 
ercise of it. Could we deeply think of it without being touched with 
a sense of the kindness of our forbearing Creditor and Governor? 
Could we gaze upon it, nay, could we glance upon it, without relent- 
ing at our offending one of so mild a nature, without being sensibly 
affected, that he hath preserved us so long from being loaded with 
those chains of darkness, under which the devils groan? This for- 
bearance hath good reason to make sin and sinners ashamed. That 
you are in being, is not for want of advantages enough in his hand 
against you; many a forfeiture you have made, and many an en- 
gagement you have broke; he hath scarce met with any other deal- 
ing from us, than what had treachery in it. W hatsoever our sincerity 
is, we have no reason to boast of it, when we consider what mixtures 
there are in it, and what swarms of base motions taint it. Hath he 
not lain pressed and groaning under our sins, as a “cart is pressed 
with sheaves” (Amos, 11. 13), when one shake of himself, as Sampson, 
might have rid him of the burden, and dismissed us in his fury into 
hell? If we should often ask our consciences why have we done 
thus and thus against so mild a God, would not the reflection on it 
put us to the blush? If men would consider, that such a time they 
provoked God to his face, and yet not have felt his sword; such a 
time they blasphemed him, and made a reproach of his name, and 
his thunder d:d not stop their motion; such a time they fell into an 
abominable brutishness, yet he kept the punishment of devils, the 
unclean spirits, from reaching them; such a time he bore an open 
affront from them, when they scoffed at his word, and he did not 
send a destruction, and laugh at it: would not such a meditation 
work some strange kind of relentings in men? What if we should 
consider, that we cannot do a sinful act without the support of his 
concurring Providence? We cannot see, hear, move, without his 
concourse. All creatures we use for our necessity or pleasure, are 
supported by him in the very act of assisting to pleasure us; and 
when we abuse those creatures against him, which he supports for our 
use, how great is his patience to bear with us, that he doth not anni- 
hilate those creatures, or at least embitter their use! What issue 
could reasonably be expected from this consideration, but, “O 
wretched man that I am, to serve myself of God’s power to affront 
him, and of his long-suffering to abuse him?” O infinite patience 
to employ that power to preserve me, that might have been used 
to punish me! He is my Creator, I could not have a being with- 
out him, and yetI offend him! He is my Preserver, I cannot main- 
tain my being without him, and yet I affront him! Is this a 


518 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


worthy requital of God (Deut. xxxii. 6), ‘‘Do you thus requite the 
Lord?” would be the heart-breaking reflection. How would it 
give men a fuller prospect of the depravation of their nature than 
anything else; that their corruption should be so deep and strong, 
that so much patience could not overcome it! It would certainly 
make a man ashamed of his nature as well as his actions. j 

(3.) The consideration of his patience would make us resent more 
the injuries done by others to God. A patient sufferer, though a 
deserving sufferer, attracts the pity of men, that have a value for any 
virtue, though clouded with a heap of vice. How much more should 
we have a concern of God, who suffers so many abuses from others! 
and be grieved, that so admirable a patience should be slighted by 
men, who solely live by and under the daily influence of it! The 
impression of this would make us take God’s part, as it is usual with 
men to take the part of good dispositions that lie under oppression. 

(4.) It would make us patient under God’s hand. His slowness to 
anger and his forbearance is visible, in the very strokes we feel in 
this life. We have no reason to murmur against him, who gives us 
so little cause, and in the greatest afflictions gives us more occasion 
of thankfulness than of repining. Did not slowness to the extremest 
anger moderate every affliction, it had been a scorpion instead of a 
rod. We have reason to bless Him, who, from his long-suffering, 
sends temporal sufferings, where eternal are justly due. (Hzra, ix. 
13), “Thou hast punished us less than our iniquities do deserve.” 
His indulgences towards us have been more than our corrections, and 
the length of his patience hath exceeded the sharpness of his rod. 
Upon the account of his long-suffering, our mutinies against God 
have as little to excuse them, as our sins against him have to deserve 
his forbearance. The consideration of this would show us more rea- 
son to repine at our own repinings, than at any of his smarter deal- 
ings; and the consideration of this would make us submissive under 
the judgments we expect. His undeserved patience hath been more 
than our merited judgments can possibly be thought to be. If we 
fear the removal of the gospel for a season, as we have reason to do, 
we should rather bless him, that by his waiting patience, he hath 
continued it so long, than murmur, that he threatens to take it away 
so late. He hath borne with us many a year, since the light of it 
was rekindled, when our ancestors had but six years’ of patience 
between the rise of Edward the Sixth, and the ascent of Queen 
Mary, to the crown. 

9. Exhortation is to admire and stand astonished at his patience, 
“and bless him for it.”. If you should have defiled your neighbor’s 
bed, or sullied his reputation, or rifled his goods, would he have 
withheld his vengeance, unless he had been too weak to execute it? 
We have done worse to God than we can do to man, and yet he 
draws not that sword of wrath out of the scabbard of his patience, 
to sheath it in our hearts. It is not so much a wonder that any 
judgments are sent, as that there are no more, and sharper. ‘That 
the world shall be fired at last, is not a thing so strange, as that 
fire doth not come down every day upon some part of it. Had the 
disciples, that saw such excellent patterns of mildness from their 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. B19 


Master, and were so often urged to learn of him that was lowly 
and meek, the government of the world, it had been long sine 
turned into ashes, since they were too forward to desire him to open 
his magazine of judgments, and kindle a fire to consume a Samaritan 
village, for a slight affront in comparison of what he received from 
others, and afterwards from themselves in their forsaking of him 
(Luke, ix. 52—54). We should admire and praise that here which 
shall be praised in heaven; though patience shall cease as to its 
exercise after the consummation of the world, it shall not cease from 
receiving the’ acknowledgments of what it did, when it traversed 
the stage of this earth. Ifthe name of God be glorified, and ac- 
knowledged in heaven, no question but this will also; since long- 
suffering is one of his Divine titles, a letter in his name, as well as 
“merciful, and gracious, abundant in goodness and truth.” And 
‘here is good reason to think that the patience exercised towards 
some, before converting grace was ordered to seize upon them, will 
bear a great part in the anthems of heaven. ‘I'he greater his long- 
suffering hath been to men, that lay covered with their own dung, 
a long time before they were freed by grace from their filth; the 
more admiringly and loudly they will ery up his mercy to them, 
after they have passed the gulf, and see a deserved hell at a distance 
from them, and many in that place of torment who never had the 
tastes of so rauch forbearance. If mercy will be praised there, that 
which began the alphabet of it, cannot be forgot. If Paul speak so 
highly of it in a damping world, and under the pull-backs of a 
“body of death,” as he doth 1 Tim. 1. 16, 17: “For this cause I ob- 
tained mercy; that Christ might show forth all long-suffering. Now 
unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be 
honor, and glory, for ever and ever. Amen.” No doubt, but he 
will have a higher note for it, when he is surrounded with a hea- 
venly flame, and freed from all remains of dulness. Shall it be 
praised above, and have we no notes for it here below? Admire 
Christ, too, who sued out your reprieve upon the account of his merit. 
As merey acts not upon any but in Christ, so neither had patience 
borne with any but in Christ. The pronouncing the arrest of 
judgment (Gen. viii. 21) was when ““God smelled a sweet savor 
from Noah's sacrifice,” not from the beasts offered, but the anti- 
typical sacrifice represented. That we may be raised to bless God 
for it, let us consider, 

(1.) The multitude of our provocations. Though some have 
blacker guilt than others, and deeper stains, yet let none wipe his 
mouth, but rather imagine himself to have but little reason to bless 
it. Are not all our offences as many as there have been minutes in 
our lives? All the moments of our continuance in the world have 
been moments of his patience and our ingratitude. Adam was 
punished for one sin, Moses excluded Canaan for a passionate un- 
believing word. Ananias and Sapphira lost their lives for one sin 
against the Holy Ghost. One sin sullied the beauty of the world, 
defaced the works of God, and cracked heaven and earth in pieces, 
had not infinite satisfaction been proposed to the provoked Justice 
by the Redeemer; and not one sin committed, but is of the same 


520 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES.’ . 


venomous nature. How many of those contradictions against him- 
self hath he borne with! Had we been only unprofitable to him, 
his forbearance of us had been miraculous; but how much doth it 
exceed a miracle, and lift itself above the meanness of a conjunction 
with such an epithet, since we have been provoking! Had there 
been no more than our impudent or careless rushings into his pres- 
ence in worship; had they been only sins of omission, and sins of 
ignorance, it had been enough to have put. a stand to any further 
operations of this perfection towards us. But add to those, sins of 
commission, sins against knowledge, sins against spiritual motions, 
sins against repeated resolutions, and pressing admonitions, the 
neglects of all the opportunities of repentance; put them all toge- 
ther, and we can as little recount them, as the sands on the sea-shore. 
But what, do I only speak of particular men? View the whole 
world, and if our own iniquities render it an amazing patience, what a 
mighty supply will be made to it in all the numerous and weighty 
provocations, under which he hath continued the world for so many 
revolutions of years and ages! Have not all those pressed into 
his presence with a loud ery, and demanded a sentence from justice? 
yet hath not the Judge been overcome by the importunity of our 
sins? Were the devils punished for one sin, a proud thought, and 
that not committed against the blood of Christ, as we have done 
numberless times; yet hath not God made us partakers in their 
punishment, though we have exceeded them in the quality of their 
sin. O admirable patience! that would bear with me under so 
many, while he would not bear with the sinning angels for one.‘ 

(2.) Consider how mean things we are, who have provoked him. 
What is man but a vile thing, that a God, abounding with all 
riches, should take care of so abject a thing, much more to bear so 
many affronts from such a drop of matter, such a nothing creature ! 
That he that hath anger at his command, as wellas pity, should endure 
such a detestable, deformed creature by sin, to fly in his face! 
“What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Ps. viii.) wx, 
miserable, incurable man, derived from a word, that signifies to be 
incurably sick. Man is “Adam,” earth from his earthly original, 
and ‘‘ Hnoch,” incurable from his corruption. Is it not worthy to 
be admired, that a God of infinite glory should wait on such Adams, 
worms of earth, and be, as it were, a servant, and attendant to such 
Enochs, sickly and peevish creatures? 

(3.) Consider who it is that is thus patient. He it is that, with 
one breath, could turn heaven and earth, and all the inhabitants of 
both, into nothing; that could, by one thunderbolt, have razed up 
the foundations of a cursed world. He that wants not instruments 
without to ruin us, that can arm our own consciences against us, and 
can drown us in our own phlegm; and, by taking out one pin from 
our bodies, cause the whole frame to fall asunder. Besides, it is a God 
that, while he suffers the sinner, hates the sin more than all the holy 
men upon earth, or angels in heaven, can do; so that his patience 
for a minute transcends the patience of all creatures, from the crea- 
tion to the dissolution of the world: because it is the patience of a 

t Pont. Part I. p. 42. 


ON GOD'S PATIENCE. 521 


God, infinitely more sensible to the cursed quality of sin, and infi- 
nitely more detesting it. 

(4.) Consider how long he hath forborne his anger. A reprieve 
for a week or a month is accounted a great favor in civil states; the 
civil law enacts, ‘ That if the emperor commanded a man to be con- 
demned, the execution was to be deferred thirty days: because in 
that time the prince’s anger might be appeased.”" But how great a 
favor is it to be reprieved thirty years for many offences, every one 
of which deserves death more at the hands of God than any offence 
can at the hands of man! Paul was, according to the common 
account, but about thirty years old at his conversion; and how 
much doth he elevate Divine long-suffering! Certainly there are 
many who have more reason, as having larger quantities of patience 
cut out to them, who have lived to see their own gray hairs in a 
rebellious posture against God, before grace brought them to a sur- 
render. We were all condemned in the womb; our lives were 
forfeited the first moment of our breath, but patience hath stopped 
the arrest; the merciful Creditor deserves to have acknowledgment 
from us, who hath laid by his bond so many years without putting 
it in suit against us. Many of your companions in sin have perhaps 
been surprised long ago, and haled to an eternal prison; nothing is 
remaining of them but their dust, and the time is not yet come for 
your funeral. Let it be considered, that that God that would not 
wait upon the fallen angels one instant after their sin, nor give them 
a moment’s space of repentance, hath prolonged the life of many a 
sinner in the world to innumerable moments, to 420,000 minutes in 
the space of a year, to 8,400,000 minutes in the space of twenty 
years. The damned in hell would think it a great kindness to have 
but a year’s, month’s, nay, day’s respite, as a space to repent in. 

(5.) Consider also, how many have been taken away under 
shorter measures of patience: some have been struck into a hell of 
misery, while thou remainest upon an earth of forbearance. In a 
plague, the destroying angel hath hewed down others, and passed 
by us; the arrows have flew about our heads, passed over us, and 
stuck in the heart of a neighbor. How many rich men, how many 
of our friends and familiars, have been seized by death since the be- 
ginning of the year, when they least thought of it, and imagined it 
far from them! Have you not known some of your acquaintance 
snatched away in the height of a crime? Was not the same wrath 
due to you as well as to them! And had it not been as dreadful 
for you to be so surprised by Him as it was for them? Why should 
he take a less sturdy sinner out of thy company, and let thee re- 
main still upon the earth? If God had dealt so with you, how had 
you been cut off, not only from the enjoyment of this life, but the 
hopes of a better! And if-God had made such’a providence bene- 
ficial for reclaiming you, how much reason have you to acknowledge 
him! He that hath had least patience, hath cause to admire; but 
those that have more, ought to exceed others in blessing him for it. 
If God had put an end to your natural life before you had made pro- 
vision for eternal, how deplorable would your condition have been ! 

« Cod. lib. ix. Titul. 476, p. 20. 


- 


522, ‘CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


Consider also, whoever have been sinners formerly of a deeper note ; 
might not God have struck a man in the embraces of his harlots, 
and choked him in the moment of his excessive and intemperate 
healths, or on the sudden have spurted fire and brimstone into a 
blasphemer’s mouth? What if God had snatched you away, when 
you had been sleeping in some great iniquity, or sent you while 
burning in lust to the fire it merited? Might he not have cracked 
the string that linked your souls to your bodies, in the last sickness 
you had? And what then had become of you? What could have 
been expected to succeed your impenitent state in this world, but 
howlings in another? but he reprieved you upon your petitions, or 
the solicitations of your friends; and have you not broke your word . 
with him? Have your hearts been steadfast; hath he not yet 
waited, expecting when you would put your vows and resolutions 
into execution? What need had he to cry out to any so loud and so 
long, O you fools, “how long will you love foolishness ?” (Prov. i. 
22), when he might have ceased his crying to you, and have by your 
death prevented your many neglects of him? Did he do all this 
that any of us might add new sins to our old; or rather, that we 
should bless him for his forbearance, comply with the end of it in 
reforming our lives, and having recourse to his mercy ? 3 

3. Exhortion; therefore presume not upon his patience. The ex- 
ercise of it is not eternal; you are at present under his patience; 
yet, while you are unconverted, you are also under his anger (Ps. 
vii. 11), “God is angry with the wicked every day.” You know 
not how soon his anger may turn his patience aside, and step before 
it. It may be his sword is drawn out of /his scabbard, his arrows 
may be settled in his bow; and perhaps there is but a little time be- 
fore you may feel the edge of the one or the point of the other: and 
then there will be no more time for patience in God to us, or petition 
from us to him. If we repent here he will pardon us. If we defer 
repentance, and die without it, he will have no longer mercy to par- 
don, nor patience to bear. What is there in our power but the 
present? the future time we cannot command, the past time we can- 
not recall; squander not then the present away. The time will come 
when “time shall be no more,” and then long-suffering shall be no 
more. Will you neglect the time, wherein patience acts, and vainly 
hope for a time beyond the resolves of patience? Will you spend 
that in vain, which goodness hath allotted you for other purposes ? 
What an estimate will you make of a little forbearance to respite 
death, when you are gasping under the stroke of its arrows! How 
much would you value some few days of those many years you now 
trifle away! Can any think God will be always at an expense 
with them in vain, that he will have such riches trampled under 
their feet, and so many editions of his patience be made waste 
paper? Do you know how few sands are yet to run in your glass? 
Are you sure that He that waits to-day, will wait as well to-morrow ¢ 
How can you tell, but that God that is slow to anger to-day, may be 
swift to it the next? Jerusalem had but a day of peace, and the 
most careless sinner hath no more. When their day was done, they 
were destroyed by famine, pestilence, or sword, or led into a doleful 


ON GOD'S. PATIENCE. 523 


captivity. Did God make our lives so uncertain, and the duration 
of his forbearance unknown to us, that we should live in a lazy 
neglect of his glory, and our own happiness? If you should have 
more patience in regard of your lives, do you know whether you 
shall have the effectual offers of grace? As your lives depend upon 
his will, so your conversion depends solely upon his grace. There 
have been many examples of those miserable wretches, that have 
been left to a reprobate sense, after they have a long time abused 
Divine forbearance. Though he waits, yet he “binds up sin.” (Hos. 
xii. 12), “The sin of Ephraim is bound up,” as bonds are bound 
up by a creditor till a fit opportunity: when God comes to put the 
bond in suit, it will be too late to wish for that patience we have so 
scornfully despised. Consider therefore the end of patience. The 
patience of God considered in itself, without that which it tends to, 
affords very little comfort; it is but a step to pardoning mercy, and 
it may be without it, and often is. Many have been reprieved that 
were never forgiven ; hell is full of those that had patience as well 
as we, but not one that accepted pardoning grace went within the 
gates of it. Patience leaves men, when their sins have ripened them 
for hell; but pardoning grace never leaves men till it hath con- 
ducted them to heaven. His patience speaks him placable, but doth 
not assure us that he is actually appeased. Men may hope that a 
long-suffering tends to a pardon, but cannot be assured of a pardon, 
but by something else above mere long-suffering. Rest not then 
upon bare patience, but consider the end of it; it is not that any 
should sin more freely, but repent more meltingly; it is not to spirit 
rebellion, but give a merciful stop to it. Why should any be so 
ambitious of their ruin, as to constrain God to ruin them against the 
inclinations of his sweet disposition-? 

4, The fourth exhortation is, Let us imitate God’s patience in our 
own to others. He is unlike God that is hurried, with an unruly 
impetus, to punish others for wronging him. ‘The consideration of 
Divine patience should make us square ourselves according to that 
pattern. God hath exercised a long-suffering from the fall of Adam 
to this minute on innumerable subjects, and shall we be transported 
with desire of revenge upon a single injury? If God were not 
‘slow to wrath,” a sinful world had been long ago torn up from the 
foundation. Andif revenge should be exercised by all men against 
their enemies, what man should have been alive, since there is not a 
man without an enemy? If every man were like Saul, breathing 
out threatenings, the world would not only be an aceldema, but a 
desert. How distant are they from the nature of God, who are ina 
flame upon every slight provocation from a sense of some feeble and 
imaginary honor, that must bloody their sword for a trifle, and write 
their revenge in wounds and death! When God hath his glory 
every day bespattered, yet he keeps his sword in his sheath; what a 
woe would it be to the world, if he drew it upon every affront! 
This is to be like brutes, dogs, or tigers, that snarl, bite, and devour, 
upon every slight occasion: but to be patient is to be divine, and to 
show ourselves acquainted with the disposition of God. “Be you 
therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matt. v. 48) : 


524 CHARNOCK ON THE ATTRIBUTES. 


@. €. Be you perfect and good; for he had been exhorting them to 
bless them that cursed them, and to do good to them that hated 
them, and that from the example God had set them, in causing 
his sun to rise upon the evil as well as the good. ‘Be you there- 
fore perfect.” T’o conclude: as patience is God’s perfection, so it is 
the accomplishment of the soul: and as his “slowness to anger” 
argues the greatness of his power over himself, so an unwillingness 
to revenge is a sign of a power over ourselves which is more noble 
than to be a monarch over others. 


INDEX. 


A, 


Acquaintance with God, men are unwilling 
to have any, i. 158.—See Communion. 
Actions a greater proof of principles than 
words, i. 92. All are known by God, i. 

424. 

Activity required in spiritual worship, i. 
227, 228. 

Adam, the greatness of his sin, ii. 269, 429. 
—See Man, and Fall of Man. 

Additions in matters of religion an inva- 
sion of God’s sovereignty, il. 432, 433.— 
See Worship, and Ceremonies. 

Admiration ought to be exercised in spir- 
itual worship, i. 233. 

Affections, human, in what sense ascribed 
to God, i. 340—343. 

Afflictions, sharp, make Atheists fear there 
is a God, i. 81. Make us impatient (See 
Impatience). We should be patient un- 
der them (see Patience). Many call on 
God only under them, i. 151. Fill us 
with distraction in the worship of God, 
i. 258. The presence of God a comfort 
in them, i. 899; and his knowledge, i. 
488. The wisdom of God apparent in 
them, i. 547—550. The wisdom of God a 
comfort in them, i. 593; and his power, 
ii. 98, 99; and his sovereignty, ii. 451. 
Do not impeach his goodness, ii. 243, 
244, The goodness of God seen in them, 
ii. 8309—311. His goodness a comfort in 
them, ii. 342. Acts of God’s sovereignty, 
ii. 873—376; the consideration of which 
would make us entertain them as we 
ought, ii. 456. 

Age, many neglect the serving of God till 
ola, 1. 113. 

Air, how useful a creature, i. 54. 

Almighty, how often God is so called in 
Scripture, ii, 10. How often in Job, il. 
36. 

Angels, good, what benefit they have by 
Christ, i. 536, ii. 268, 264, Not instru- 
ments in the creation of man, ii. 41. 
Evil, not redeemed, ii. 268, 264. 

Angels, not governors of the world, ii. 328, 
829. Subject to God, il. 381, 382. 


Apostasy. Men apostatize from God when 
his will crosses theirs, i. 185. In times 
of persecution, 1. 149, 150. By reason of 
practical atheism, i. 167. 

Apostles, the first preachers of the gospel, 
mean and worthless men, ii. 69—7l1. 
Spirited by Divine power for spreading 
of it, i. 72—74. The wisdom of God 
Her in using such instruments, i. 978, 
579. 

Applauding ourselves.—See Pride. 

Atheism opens a door to all manner of 
wickedness, i. 24. Some spice of if in all 
men, i. 25—27. The greatest folly, i. 24 
—i7. Common in our days, i. 26, 79, 
80. Strikes at the foundation of all re- 
ligion, i. 26. We should establish our- 
selves against it, 26. It is against the 
light of natural reason, i.2. Against the 
universal consent of all nations, i. 29, 30. 
But few, if any, professed it in former 
ages, 1, 82—34, 80. Would root up the 
foundations of all government, i. 77. In- 
troduce all evil into the world, i. 78. 
Pernicious to the atheist himself, i. 79. 
The cause of public judgments, i. 80. 
Men’s lusts the cause of it, i, 82. Pro- 
moted by the devil most since the de- 
struction of idolatry, 1.84. Uncomfort- 
able, i. 85. Directions against it, i. 87. 
All sin founded in a secret atheism, 3. 
98. 

Atheism, practical, natural to man, i. 89. 
Natural since the fall, i. 90. To all men, 
ib. Proved by arguments, 1. 99—161. We 
ought to be humbled for it, both in our- 
selves and others, i.167. How great a 
sin it is, i, 169—171. Misery will at- 
tend it, i. 171, 172. We should watch 
against it, 2b. Directions against it, i. 
172, 178. 

Atheist ean never prove there is no God, i. 
81. All the creatures fight against him, 
ib. In afflictions, suspects and fears 
there is a God, i. 82. How much pains 
he takes to blot out the notion, 7b. Sup- 

se it were an even lay that there were 
no God, yet he is very imprudent, i. 83. 
Uses not means to inform himself, 2b. 


526 


Atoms, the world not made by a casual 
concourse of them, 1. 50. 
Attributes of God bear a comfortable re- 
spect to believers, i. 513. 
Authority, bow distinguished from power, 
li. 364, 
B. 


Best we have, ought to be given to God, i. 
242—244. 

Blessings, spiritual, God only the author 
of, ii. 8357. Temporal, God uses a sover- 
eigntv in bestowing them, ii. 412, 413.— 
See Riches. 

Body of man, how curiously wrought, i 
683—67, 528. Every human one hath 
different features, 1.66. God hath none 
(See Spirit). We must worship God 
with our bodies, i, 219—222; yet not 
with our bodies only.—See Soul, and 
Worship. 

Bodily shape, we must not conceive of God 
under a, i. 197, 198, 

Bodily members ascribed to him.—See 

' Members. 

Brain, how curious a workmanship, i. 65. 


P C. 


Calf, golden, the Israelites worshipped the 
true God under, 1. 195. 

Callings, God fits and inclines nen to seve- 
ral, i. 531, 5382; ii.598. Appvints every 
man’s calling, ii. 421. 

Cause, a first, of all things, i. 50, 51; which 
doth necessarily exist, and is infinitely 
perfect, i. 51. 

Censure. God not to be censured in his 
counsels, actions, or revelations, i. 295. 
Or in his ways, i. 605, 606. 

Censuring the hearts of others is an injury 
to God’s omniscience, i. 478. Men, is a 
contempt of Gud’s sovereignty, Ul. 441. 

Ceremonial Law abolished to promote spir- 
itual worship, i 218. Called flesh, 76. 
Not a fit means to bring the heart intoa 
spiritual frame, i. 214. Rather hindered 
than furthered spiritual worship, i. 215, 

216. God never testified himself well- 
pleased with it, nor intended it should 
always last, i. 216—218. The abroga- 
tion of it doth not argue any change in 
God, i. 846. The holiness of God ap- 
pears in it, hilst, 182: 

Ceremonies, men are prone to bring their 
own into God’s worship, i. 138, 184— 
See Worship, and Additions, &e. 

Chance, the world not made nor governed 
by it, i. 59. : 

Charity, men have bad ends in it, 1.153. We 
should exercise it, i. 358, 354. The 
consideration of God’s sovereignty would 
promote it, li. 456. : 

Cheerful, in God’s worship we should be, 1. 
235. 

Christ, his Godhead proved from his eter- | 


INDEX. 


nity, 1. 291—298 ; from his omnipresence, 
i, 392, 893; from his immutability, i. 346 
—348; from his knowledge of God, all 
creatures, the hearts of men, and his 
prescience of their inclinations, i. 465— 
469; from his omnipotence, manifest in 
creation, preservation and resurrection, 
ii. 80—86; from his holiness, ui. 190; 
from his wisdom, i. 558. 

Christ is God man, li. 62. Spiritual wor- 
ship offered to God through him, i. 241, 
242. The imperfectness of our services 
should make us prize his medtation, i. 
261. The only fit Person in the ‘l'rinity 
to assume our nature, i. 558—560. Fit- 
ted to be our Medtator and Saviour by 
his two natures, i. 568—565. Should be 
imitated in his holiness, and often viewed 
by us to that end, i. 200—207. The 
greatest gift, i. 266—269. Appvinted 
by the Father to be our Redeemer, ii. 
424—496. 

Christian religion, its excellency, 1. 167. 
Of Divine extraction, 1. 580. Most op- 
posed in the world, 1 111.—See Gospel. 

Church, God’s eternity a comfort to her in 
all her distresses and threatenings of her 
enemies, i. 299, 300. Under Gou’s spe- 
cial providence, i. 406. His infinite 
knowledge a comfort in all subtile con- 
trivances of men against her, 1. 483, 484. 
Troublers of her peace by corrupt doc- 
trines no better than devils, i. 498. God’s 
wisdom a comfort to her in her greatest 
dangers, i. 594. Hath shown his power 
in her deliverance in all ages, 1. 277, iL. 
55; and in the destruction of her ene- 
mies, ti, 56—59. Ought to take comfort 
in his power in her lowest estate, ii. 101. 
Should not fear her enemies (see Hear). 
His goodness a comfort in dangers, 1. 
344, How great is God’s love to her, i1. 
449—515. His sovereignty a comfort to 
her, li. 452, 453. He will comfort her in 
her fears, and destroy her enemies, ii. 
472, 4738. God exercises patience to 
wards her, ii. 504, 505; for her sake to 
the wicked also, ii, 506. Why her ene 
mies are not immediately destroyed, ii. 
513, 513. 

Commands of God.—See Laws. 

Comfort, the holiness of God to be relied 
on for, i 190, 191. 

Comfort us, creatures cannot, if God be an- 
gry, i 448, } 
Comforts, God gives great, in or after 

temptations, ii, 8311—318. 

Communion with God, man naturally no 
desire of, i. 161. The advantage of, 1. 
172. Can only be in our spirits, 1. 202. 
We should desire it, 1. 308. Cannot be 
between God and sinners, i, 188. Holi- 
ness only fits us for it, ii, 204, 205. 

Conceptions, we cannot have adequate ones 
of God, i. 196, 197. We ought to labor af- 
ter as high ones as we can, 20. ‘l’bey must 


INDEX. 


not be of him in a corporeal shape, i. 
197, 198. There will be in them a sim- 
iltude of some corporeal thing in our 
fancy, i. 198, 199. We ought to refine 
and spiritualize them, i. 200. 

Conceptions, right, of him, a great help to 
spiritual worship, i. 272, 278. 

Concurrence of God to all the actions of his 
creatures, ii, 156, 157. 

Concurring to sinful actions no blemish to 
God’s holiness, ii. 157—168. 

Cond:tions, various, of men, a fruit of Di- 
vine wisdom, i. 581, 582. 

Conditions of the eovenant.—See Covenant, 
Faith, and Repentance. 

Confession of sin, men may have bad ends 
in it, i. 158. Partial ones a practical de- 
nial of God’s omniscience, i. 480, 481. 

Conscience proves a Deity, i. 69—73. Fears 
and stings of it in all men upon the com- 
mission of sin, i. 70—72; though never 
so secret, i, 71,72. Cannot be totally 
shaken off, i. 72. Comforts a man in 
well-doing, i. 72, 73. Necessary for the 
good of the world, 1. 73. Terrified ones 
wish there were no God, i. 97. Men 
naturally displeased with it, when it 
contradicts the desires of self, i. 123. 
Obey carnal self against the light of it, 
i. 140, 141. Accusations of it evidence 
God’s knowledge of all things, i. 463. 
God, and he only, can speak peace to it 
when troubled, i. 79, 386. His laws 
only reach it, 1. 8390, 891, 482, 433. 

Constancy in that which is good, we should 
labor after, and why, i. 360, 361. 

Content the soul, nothing but an infinite 
good can, i. 78, 74.—See Satisfaction, and 
Soul. 

Contingents all foreknown by God.—See 
Knowledge of God. 

Contradictions cannot be made true by 
God, ii. 26—80; yet this doth not over- 
throw God’s omnipotence, 76. It is an 
abuse of God’s power to endeavor to 
justify them by.it, il. 95. 

Contrary qualities linked together in the 
creatures, 1. 52, 58, 524. 

Conversion, carnal self-love a great hin- 
drance to it, i, 187. There may be a 
conversion from sin which is not good, i. 
150. Men are enemies to it, i. 160, 161. 
The necessity of it, i. 168, 164. God 
only can be the Author of it, i. 165, 166, 
ii. 396. The wisdom of God appears in it, 
in the subjects, seasons, and manner of 
it, i 544—547; and his power, li. 72— 
78; and his holiness, ii, 189; and his 
goodness, ii. 306, 307 ; and his sovereign- 
ty, ii. 896—404. He could convert all, 
il. 899. Not bound to convert any, ii. 
401, 402. The various means and occa- 
sions of it, ii. 421. 

Convictions, genuine, would be promoted 
by right and strong apprehensions of | 
God’s holiness, ii. 191. . 


527 


Corruptions, the knowledge of God a ecom- 
fort under fears of them lurking in the 
heart, i. 489, 490. The power of God a 
comfort when they are strong and stir- 
ring, ii. 99 In God's people shall be 
subdued, ii. 450, 451; the remainders of 
them God orders for their good, i. 538, 
544, 

Covenant of God with his people eternal, 
i. 297, 298; and unchangeable, i. 354. 
Covenant, God in, an eternal good to his 

people, i. 297. 

Covenant of grace, conditions of, evidence 
the wisdom of God, i. 571. Suited to 
man’s lapsed state, and God's glory, 70. 
Opposite to that which was the cause of 
the fall, i. 572. Suited to the common 
sentiments and customs of the world and 
consciences of men, i. 572, 573. Only 
likely to attain the end, i.573. Kvidence 
God's holiness, ii. 188. The wisdom of 
God made over to believers in it, i. 598 
594; and power, ii, 98; and holiness, il. 
190 191. <A promise of life implied in 
the covenant of works, ii. 258, 254; why 
not expressed, ii. 527. Tbe goodness of 
God manifest in making a covenant of 
grace after man had broken the first, ii. 
274, 275. In the nature and tenor of 
it, ii, 275—277. In the choice gift of 
himself made over in it, ii. 277, 278. In 
its confirmation, ii. 278, 279. Its condi- 
tions easy, reasonable, necessary, li. 279 
—284, It promises a more excellent re- 
ward than the life in paradise, i. 291— 
298. 

Covetousness—See Riches, and World. 

Creation, the wisdom of God appears in it, 
i. 518—525; and should be meditated 
upon, i. 525; motives to it, il. 5—9 , his 
power, ii, 85—44; his holiness, i126, 
127; his goodness, 244—258. Goodness 
the end and motive of it, il, 228, 229. 
Ascribed to Christ, ii. 81--85. The 
foundation of God’s dominion, li, 368— 
37U. 

Creatures evidence the being of God, i. 28, 
42—64; in their production, i. 48—51 ; in 
their harmony, i, 52—60; in pursuing 
their several ends, i. 60—62; in their 
preservation, i. 62, 63. Were not, and 
cannot be, from eternity, 1. 45, 46, 292. 
None of them can make themselves, 1. 47 
—49; or the world, i. 49, 50. Subservi- 
ent to one another, i, 53, 878. Regular, 
uniform, and constant in it, 1 56, 57. 
Are various, i. 58, 519, 520. Have seve- 
ral natures, i, 60. All fight against the 
atheist, i. 82. God ought to be studied 
in them, i. 86. All manifest something 
of God’s perfections, ib. Setting them 
up as our end (see Hnd). Must not be 
worshipped (see /dolatry). Used by man 
to a contrary end than God appuinted, 
i 148. All are changeable, i. 355. 
Therefore an immutable God to be pre- 


528 


ferred before them, i. 358. Are nothing 
to God, 395. Are all known by God, 1. 
422, 423. Shall be restored to their 
primitive end, i. 313, ii. 293. Their beau- 
tiful order and situation, i. 520,521. Are 
fitted for their several ends, i 522—524, 
None of them can be omnipresent, i. 
378; or omnipotent, ii. 18; or infinitely 
perfect, ii, 24; God could have made 
more than he hath, ii. 21, 22. Made 
them all more perfect than they are, ii. 
23, 24. Yet all are made in the best 
manner, li. 24, 25. The power that is in 
them demonstrates a greater to be in 
God, ii. 31. Ordered by God as he 
pleases, ii, 57. The meanest of them 
can destroy us by God’s order, ii. 107, 
448. Making different ranks of them, 
doth not impeach God’s goodness, ii. 232 
—235. Cursed for the sin of man, ii. 
250, 293. What benefit they have by 
the redemption of man, ii. 298, 294. 
Cannot comfort us if God be angry, ii. 
448. All subjeet to God, i, 381—387. 
_All obey God. ii. 465, 466. 

Curiosity in inquiries about God’s counsels 
and actions, a great folly, i. 295. It is 
an injuring God’s knowledge, 475—477. 
It is acontempt of Divine wisdom, i. 590. 
Should not be employed about what God 
hath not revealed, i. 608, 604. The 
consideration of God’s sovereignty would | 
check it, ii. 457. 

D 

Day, how necessary, i, 523. 

Death of Christ, its value is from his Di- 
vine Nature, i 564. Vindicated the 
honor of the law, both as to precept and 
penalty, i. 566. Overturned the Devil’s 
empire, i. 568. He suffered to rescue us 
by it, ii. 268. By the command of the 
Father, ii. 425, 426. 

Debauched persons wish there were no 
God, i. 97. 

Decrees of God, no succession in them. i. 
285. Unchangeable, i. 582, 583, ii. 451, 
452.—See Immutability. 

Defilement, God not capable of it from any 
corporeal thing, i. 201, 390, 392. 

Delight, holy duties should be performed 
with, i, 234—236. All delight in wor- 
ship doth not prove it to be spiritual, i. 
235. We should examine ourselves after 
worship, what delight we had in it, i. 
252. 

Deliverances chiefly to be ascribed to God, 
1.406. The wisdom of God seen in them, 
1 550—552. 

Desires, of man, naturally after an infinite 
good, i. 73, 74; which evidences the be- 
ing of a God, i. 74. Men naturally have 
no desire of remembrance of God, con- 
verse with him, thorough return to him, 


or imitation of him, i. 159—161. | 


INDEX. 


Devil, man naturally under his dominion, 
i. 118, 119. God’s restraining him, how 
great a mercy (see Restraint). Shall be 
totally subdued by God, i. 498. Out- 
witted by God, i. 568. His first sin, 
what it was, il. 427—429.—See Angel. 

Direction, men neglect to ask it of God 
(see Trusting in ourselves). Should seek 
it of him, i. 585. Not to do it, how sin- 
ful, i. 589, 590. Should not presume to 
give it to him, i. 591. 

Disappointments make many cast off their 
obedience to God, i. 115, 116. God dis- 
appoints the devices of men, ii. 418— 
420. 

Dispensations of God with his own law, ii. 
891--393. 

Distance from God naturally affected by 
men, i. 158, 159. How great it is, ii. 180. 

Distractions in the service of God, how 
natural, i. 114, 256. Will be so while 
we have natural corruption within, i. 256, 
257; while we are in the Devil’s precinct, 
1,257. Most frequent in time of afflic- 
tion, 1. 258. May be improved to make 
us more spiritual, 1. 258—261; when we 
are humbled for them in worship, i. 258, 
259; and for the baseness of our natures, 
the cause of them, 1. 259. Make us prize 
duties of worship the more, 26. Fill us 
with admirations of the graciousness of 
God, 1. 260. Prize the meditation of 
Christ, 1. 261. They should not discou- 
rage us, if we resist them, 76; andif we 
narrowly watch against them, i. 262. 
Should be speedily cast out, i, 274. 
Thoughts of God’s presence a remedy 
against them, i. 404. 

Distresses—See A filictions. 

Distrust of God, a contempt of God's wis- 
dom, i. 598; and his power, ii. 93; and 
of his goodness, ii. 319, 820. Too great 
fear of man arises from it, ii, 94.—See 
Trusting in God, and in ourselves. 

Divinity of Christ—See Christ. Of the 
Holy Ghost —See Holy Ghost. 

Doctrines that are self-pleasing desired by 
men, 1. 189.--See Truths. 

Dominion of God distinguished from his 
power, ll. 864 All his other attributes 
fit him for it, ii 364, 865. Acknowledged 
by all, 22. Inseparable from the notion 
of God, 1. 865, 366. Wecannot suppose 
God a creator without it, ii. 866. Can- 
not be renounced by God himself, 20. ; 
nor communicated to any creature, i. 366, 
867. Its foundation, i. 867--372. It is 
independent, ii. 372, 373; absolute, i, 
878—877; yet not tyrannical, i. 377, 
878; managed with wisdom, righteous 
ness, and goodness, ii. 878—880. It is 
eternal, ii. 386, 887. It is manifested as 
he is a lawgiver, li. 887—394; as a pro- 
prietor, ii. 394-413; as a governor, ii. 
4138—422; as a redeemer, ll, 422—426, 
The contempt of it, how great, ii. 426, 


INDEX. 


427. All sin is a contempt of it, ii. 427, 
428. The first thing the devil aimed 
against, ii. 428, 429; and Adam, ii. 429. 
Invaded by the usurpations of men, ii. 
430, 431. Wherein it is contemned as 
as he is a lawgiver, li, 481—435; asa 
proprietor, ii, 485, 436; as a governor, 
i. 486—441. It is terrible to the wick- 
ed, ii. 446—448. Comfortable to the 
righteous, ii. 449—453. Should be often 
meditated upon by us, ii. 453, 454. The 
advantages of so doing, il. 454—457. It 
should teach us humility, ii. 458. Calls 
for our praise and thanks, ii, 459, 460. 
Should make us promote his honor, ti. 
461, 462. Calls for fear, prayer, and 
obedience, ii. 462, 468. Affords motives 
to obedience, ii. 463—466 ; and shows the 
manner of it, ii. 466—469. Calls for 
patience, ii. 469. Affords motives to it, 
li. 469—471. Shows us the true nature 
of it, ii, 471, 

Duties of religion performed often merely 
for self-interest, i. 150—154. Men un- 
wieldy to them, i.151. Perform them 
only in affliction, i. 151, 152.—See Ser- 
vice of God, and Worship. 

Dwelling in heaven, and in the ark, how to 
be understood of God, i. 385, 386. 


E. 


Ear of man, bow curious an organ, 1. 65. 

Earth, how useful, i. 54,55. The wisdom 
of God seen in it, i. 522. 

Earthly things—See World. 

Hjaculations, how useful, i, 272. 

Elect, God knows all their persons, i. 485, 
486. 

Election evidenced by holiness, ii. 205. The 
sovereignty of God appears in it, il. 394 
—396. Not grounded on merit in the 
creature, ii. 8396. Nor on foresight of 
faith and good works, ii. 396—399. 

Elements, though contrary, yet linked to- 
gether, 1. 52, 53. 

End. All creatures conspire to one com- 
mon end, i. 583—60; pursue their several 
ends, though they know them not, i. 60 
—62. Men have corrupt ends in reli- 
gious duties, i. 182, 150—154; for evil 
ends, i. 105, 106; desire the knowledge 
of God’s law, for by ends, i. 104. Man 
naturally would make himself his own 
end, i. 135—141; how sinful this is, i. 
141, 142; would make anything his end 
rather than God, i. 142—144; a creature, 
or a lust, i. 144—146 ; how sinful this is, 
2b.; would make himself the end of all 
creatures, i, 147, 149; how sinful this 
is, i. 149; would make himself the end 
of God, i. 148—154; how sinful this is, i. 
154, 155; cannot make God his end, till 
converted, i. 163, 164. Spiritual ones 
required in spiritual worship, i. 239— 


529 


God orders the hearts of all men to his 
own, ii. 54. God hath one, and man 
another in sin, i. 161, 162. We should 
make God our end, ii. 206. God makes 
himself his own end, how to be under- 
stood, ii. 228—230. His being the end 
of all things is one foundation of his do- 
minion, ii. 870, 371. Not using God’s 
gifts for the end for which he gave 
them, how great a sin, ii. 4385, 436. 

Enemies of the church (see Church). We 
should be kind to our worst enemies, i. 
854, 355. 

Enjoyment of God in heaven always fresh 
and glorious, 1. 298, 299. We should en- 
deavor after it here, ii. 344—3846. 

Envy. Men envy the gifts and prosperi- 
ties of others, i. 131, 182. An imitation 
of the devil, 16. A sense of God’s good- 
ness would check it, ii. 8351. A contempt 
of God’s dominion, li. 435. 

Essence of God cannot be seen, i. 184, 185. 
Is unchangeable, i. 319. 

Eternity a property of God and Christ, i. 
278, 279, 298, 294. What it is, i 280. 
In what respects God is eternal, i. 280— 
286. That he is so, proved, i, 286—291. 
God’s incommunicable property, i. 44— 
46, 291—293. Dreadful to sinners, i. 
295,296. Comfortable to the righteous, 
i, 297--801. The thoughts of it should 
abate our pride, i. 302—304; take off our 
love and confidence from the world, i. 304 
—3806. We should provide for a happy 
interest in it, i. 306; often meditate on 
it, 1. 8307, 308. Renders him worthy of 
our choicest affections, i 308; and our 
best service, i. 808, 309. 

Exaltation of Christ, the holiness of God 
appears in it, ii. 186,137. His goodness 
to us as well as to Christ, 11, 268, 269; 
and his sovereignty, ii. 426. 

Examination of ourselves before and after 
worship, and wherein our duty, 1. 252— 
256, 275. 

Experience of God’s goodness a preserva- 
tive against atheism, i, 86, 87. } 
Extremity, then God usually delivers his 

church, 101. 


F. 


Faith, the same thing may be the object 
of it, and of reason too, i. 27—29. Must 
be exercised in spiritual worship, i. 230, 
231: The wisdom, holiness, and good- 
ness of God in prescribing it as a condi 
tion of the covenant of grace (see Cove- 
nant). Must look back as far as the 
foundation promise, i. 499. Only the 
obedience flowing from it acceptable to 
God, i. 504, 505. Distinct, but insepara- 
ble from obedience, i. 505, 506. Fore- 
sight of it not the ground of election, ii. 
396—399. 


241; many have other ends in it, 2d. | Fall of man, God no way the author of it, 


VOL. I1.—34 


530 


ii, 1283—125, 142, 148. How great it is, 
ii. 480, 481. Doth not impeach God’s 
goodness, ii. “281, 232. It is evident, ii. 
325, 326; brought a curse on the crea- 
tures.—See Creatures. 

Falls of God’s children turned to their good, 
i. 587—547. 

Fear, not the cause of the belief of a God, 
i.41. Men that are under a slavish fear 
of him wish there were no God, i. 98, 99. 
Of man, a contempt of God’s power, ii. 
93, 94. Should be of God, and not of 
the pride or force of man, ii, 106, 107. 
God’s sovereignty should cause it, ii. 462. 

Features different in every man, and how 
necessary it should be so, i. 66, 67, 520. 

Fervency.—See Activity. 

Flesh. the legal services so called, i. 213, 
214. ; 

Fools, wicked men are s0, i. 28, 586, 587. 

Folly, sin is so.—See Sin. 

Forgetfulness of God, men naturally are 
prone to it, i. 159, 160. Of his mercies 
a great sin (see Mercies). How attrib- 
uted to God, i. 421. 

Foreknowledge in God of sin, no blemish to 
his holiness, ii. 145, 146—See Knowledge 
of God. 

Future things, men desirous to know them, 
i. 476,477. Known by God.—See Know- 
ledge of God. 


G. 


Gabriel, on what messages he was sent, ii. 
75. 

Generation, could not be from eternity, i. 
44—46. 

Gifts, God can bestow them on men, ii. 
384, 385. His sovereignty seen in giving 
greater measures to one than another, il. 
408—410. 

Glory of all they do or have, men are apt 
to ascribe to themselves, i. 139. Of God 
little minded in many seemingly good 
actions, i. 124—127. Men are more con- 
cerned for their own reputation than 
God’s glory, i. 140. Should be aimed at 
in spiritual worship. i. 239—241. God's 
permission of sin is in order to it, ii. 154 
—156. Should be advanced by us, ii. 
461, 462. 

God, his existence known by the light of 
nature, i. 86; by the creatures, i. 28, 29, 
42—64. Miracles not wrought to prove 
it, i. 29. Owned by the universal eon- 
sent of all nations, i. 80, 81. Never dis- 
puted of old, i. 31, 32. Denied by very 
few, if any, i. 82, 38. Constantly owned 
in all changes of the world, i. 34; under 
anxieties of conscience, 2b. The devil 
not able to root out the belief of it, i. 35. 
Natural and innate, i. 35, 86. Not intro- 
duced merely by tradition, i. 37, 88; nor 
policy, i. 38, 39; nor fear, i, 41. Wit- 
nessed to by the very nature of man, i, 


INDEX. 


68—75; and by extraordinary occur- 
rences, i. 76, 77; impossible to demon- 
strate there is none, i. 81. Motives to 
endeavor to be settled in the belief of it, 
i. 84, 85. Directions, i. 86, 87. Men wish 
there were none, and who they are, 1. 96 
—99. Two ways of describing him, ne- 
gation and affirmation, i. 181, 182. Is 
active and communicative, i. 201. Pro- 
priety in him a great blessedness (See 
Covenant). Infinitely happy, ii. 86, 87. 

Good, that which is materially so may be 
done, and not formally, i. 120, 124—126. 
Actions cannot be performed before con- 
version, i. 168, 164. The thoughts of 
God’s presence a spur to them, i. 404, 
405. God only is so, i. 210, 211. 

Goodness, pure and perfect, the royal pre- 
rogative of God only, ii, 214. Owned by 
all nations, ii. 215, 219. Inseparable 
from the notion of God, uu. 216, 217. 
What is meant by it, il. 217. How dis- 
tinguished from mercy, ti. 218, 219. Com- 
prehends all his attributes, ti. 219, 220. 
Is so by his essence, ti. 221, 222. The 
chief, 16. It is communicative, ii. 228, 
224; necessary to him, ii. 224—226; 
voluntary, ii. 226, 227; commtnicative 
with the greatest pleasure, ti. 227, 228; 
the displaying of it, the motive and end of 
all his works, ii. 228—230. Arguments 
to prove it a property of God, ii 280, 
231; vindicated from the objections made 
against it, i. 231—244; appears in crea- 
tion, ii. 244258; in redemption, ii. 258 
—294: in his government, il. 295—313; 
frequently eontemned and abused, ii. 313, 
314; the abuse and contempt of it, base 
and disingenuous, ii. 814, 315; highly re- 
sented by God, ii. 815, 316. How it is 
contemned and abused, ii. 816--3825. Men 
justly punished for it, 1. 826, 327. Fits 
God for the government of the world, 
and engages him actually to govern it, ii. 
327, 328. The ground of all religion, i. 
829, 8330. Renders God amiable to him- 
self, ii 881. Should do so to us, and 
why, ii, 332—835. Renders him a fit 
object of trust, with motives to it, drawn 
hence, i. 335—338; and worthy to be 
obeyed and honored, ii. 888—341. Com- 
fortable to the righteous, and wherein, ui. 
341—344, Should engage us to endeavor 
after the enjoyment of him, with mo- 
tives, il. 344—347. Should be often 
meditated on, and the advantages of so 
doing, ii. 347—851. Weshould be thank- 
ful for it, ii. 851-353; and imitate it, 
and wherein, ll. 358—355. 

Gospel, men greater enemies to, than to the 
law, i. 165. Its excelleney, 1. 167, 501, 
502. Called spirit, i, 213. The only 
means of establishment, i. 501. Of an 
eternal resolution, though of a tempora- 
ry revelation, i 502. Mysterious, 7d. 
The first preachers of it (see Aposéles). 


INDEX. 


Its antiquity, i. 503, 504. The goodness 
of God in spreading it among the Gen- 
tiles, i. 504. Gives no encouragement to 
licentiousness, ib. The wisdom of God 
in its propagation, i. 574—580; and 
power, li. 65—73.—See Christian Reli- 
gion. 

Government of the World: God could not 
manage it without immutability, 1. 394 ; 
and knowledge, i. 464, 465; and wisdom, 
i.575,576. The wisdom of God appears 
in his government of man, as rational, 1. 
525—532; as sinful, i 582—544; as re- 
stored, i. 544—547. The power of God 
appears in natural government, 11. 44— 
52; moral, ii. 52—54; gracious and ju- 
dicial, ii. 55—58. The goodness of God 
in it, ii, 295—313. God only fit for it, 
1.580, 581, 544; ii. 186, 827; doth actual- 
ly manage it, 1.580, 581; il. 828, 329. Is 
contemned, li, 436—441.—See Laws. 

Governor, God’s dominion as such, ii. 413 
—422. 

Grace, the power of God in planting it, i. 
14—'8 (see Conversion) ; and preserving 
it, ii. 79, 80.—See Perseverance. God's 
withdrawing it no blemish to his holi- 
ness, i. 166—170. Shall be perfected in 
the upright, ii. 190, 191. God exercises 
a sovereignty in bestowing and denying 
it, ii, 400—404. Means of grace—See 
Means. 

Graces must be acted in worship, il. 229— 
934. We should examine how we acted 
them after it, i. 253, 254. 

Growth in grace annexed to true sanctifica- 
tion, ii. 858. Should be labored after, i. 
206, 207. 


Hy 


Habits, spiritual, to be acted in spiritual 
worship, i. 229, 2380. The rooting up 
evil ones shows the power of God, u. 76, 
iT. 

Hand. Christ’s sitting at God’s right hand 
doth not prove the ubiquity of his hu- 
man nature, i. 378. 

Hardness, how God, and how maa, is the 
eause of it, il, 166—168. 

Harmony of the creatures show the being 
and wisdom of God, i. 52--60. 

Heart of man, how curiously contrived, 1. 
65. We should examine ourselves, how 
our hearts are prepared for worship, 1. 
252, 258; how they are fixed in it, and 
how they are after it, i 253256. God 
orders all men’s to his own ends, ii. 54. 

Heaven, the enjoyment of God there will 
be always fresh and glorious, 1. 298, 299. 
Why called God’s throne, i. 385, 386. 

Heavenly bodies subservient to the good 
of the world, i. 58, 54, 

Hosea, when he prophesied, ii. 490. 

Holiness a necessary ingredient in spiritual 
worship, i. 238, 289. 
tion of God, ii. 110, 111, 


A glorious perfec- | 
Owned to be | 


531 


so both by heathens and heretics, ii. 111. 
God cannot be conceived without it, it 
111, 112. It hath an excellency above 
all his other perfections, ii. 112. Most 
loftily and frequently sounded forth by 
the angels, ib. He swears by it, id. {t 
is his glory and life, ii. 112, 118, The 
glory of all the rest, ii. 118, 114. What 
it is, and how distinguished from right- 
eousness, ii, 114, 115. His essential and 
necessary perfection, ii. 115, 116. God 
only absolutely holy, ii. 116—118. Causes 
him to abhor all sin necessarily, intense- 
ly, universally, and perpetually, li. 118 
—122. Inclines him to love it in others, 
i. 121,190,191. Sogreat that he cannot 
positively will and encourage sin in oth- 
ers,or do it himself, ii. 122126. Appears 
in his creation, il. 126, 127; in his gov- 
ernment, ii. 127—135 ; in redemption, i. 
135--138; in justification, ii, 188; in 
regeneration, ii, 189. Defended in all his 
acts about sin, li. 189--171. How much 
it is contemned in the world, and where- 
in, li. 171--180. To hate and scoff at it 
in others, how great a sin, 11.176. Ne- 
cessarily obliges him to punish sin, ii. 
181--183 ; and exact satisfaction for it, 
ii. 183, 184. Fits him for the govern- 
ment of the world, ii. 186,187. Com 
fortable to holy men, ii. 190, 191. Shall 
be perfected in the upright, 7b. We 
should get, and preserve right and strong 
apprehensions of it; and the advantage 
of so doing, ii 191--196. We should 
glorify God for it, and how, ii. 196—199 
and labor after a conformity to it, and 
wherein, ii. 199-201; motives to do so, 
ii. 203 —205 ; and directions, ii. 205—207, 
We should labor to grow in it, il. 206, 
207. Exert it in our approaches to God, 
ii. 207. Seek it at his hands, ii. 207, 208. 

Holy Ghost, his Deity proved, ii. 86. 

Humility a necessary ingredient in spirit- 
ual worship, i. 237, 238. We should ex- 
amine ourselves about it after worship, 1. 
256. A consideration of God’s eternity 
would promote it, i. 302; and of his 
knowledge, i. 496, 497; and of his wis- 
dom, i. 597; and of his power, li. 106; 
and of his holiness, ii. 192, 198; and of 
his goodness, ii. 323; and his sovereign- 
ty, ii. 457, 458, 

Hypocrites, their false pretences a virtual 
denial of God’s knowledge, i. 481, 483 ; 1b 
is terrible to them, i. 492. 


I 


Tdleness, it is an abuse of God’s mercies to 
make them an occasion of it, ii. 323. 

Idolatry of the heathens proves the belief 
of a God to be universal, i. 80, 31. The 
first object of it was the heavenly bodies, 
1.43. Springs from unworthy imagina- 
tions of God, 1.157. Not countenanced 


582 


by God’s omnipresence, i. 889, 390. 
Springs from a want of due notion of 
God’s infinite power, ii. 92. A contempt 
of God’s dominion, ii. 436, 437. 

Image of God in man consists not in exter- 
nal form and figure, i. 192, 192. Un- 
reasonable to make any of him, i. 193— 
195; it is idolatry so to do, i. 195, 196. 
The defacing it an injury to God’s holi- 
ness, li. 173, 174. Man, at first, made 
after it, il, 248. 

Imaginations, men naturally have un- 
worthy ones of God, i. 155, 156. Vain 
ones the cause of idolatry, and supersti- 
tion, and presumption, i. 156, 157; worse 
than idolatry or atheism, i. 158; an in- 
jury to God’s holiness, ii. 172, 178. 

Imitation of God, man naturally hath no 
desire of it, i. 161. We should strive to 
imitate his immutability in that which 
is good, i. 8360, 361. In holiness, wherein, 
and why, and how, ii. 199—207; and in 
goodness, ii. 853—3855. 

Immortal, God is so, i. 202—See Hternity 
of God. 

Immutability a property of God, i. 316, 
317; a perfection, i. 317, 818; a glory 
belonging to all his attributes, i. 318; 
necessary to him,i. 318, 319. God is 
immutable in his essence, i. 319—321; 
in knowledge, i. 321—825 ; in his will, 
though the things willed by him are not, 
i, 825—328. This doth not infringe his 
liberty, i. 828. Immutable in regard of 
place, i. 328, 329. Proved by arguments, 
1. 320—884, 582, 583; ii. 87. Incom- 
municable to any creature, i. 334, 335, 
1.141. Objections against it answered, i. 
337—3846. Ascribed to Christ, i. 346— 
348. A ground and encouragement to 
worship him, i. 348--350. How contra- 
ry to God in it man is, i. 850, 853. + Ter- 
rible to sinners, i. 8353, 854. Comfortable 
to the righteous, and wherein, i. 8354— 
356. An argument for patience, i. 359. 
Should make us prefer God before all 
creatures, i. 858. We should imitate 
this his immutability in goodness ; mo- 
tives to it, i. 360, 361. 

Impatience of men is great when God 
crosses them, i. 130, 131. A contempt 
of God’s wisdom, i. 592 ; and of his good- 
ness, li. 317, 318; and of his dominion, 
i. 437, 488. 

Impenitence an abuse of God’s goodness, ii. 
319. It will clear the equity of God’s 
justice, ii, 506, 507. An abuse of pa- 
tience, ii. 508, 509. 

imperfections in holy duties we should be 
sensible of, i. 232. Should make us prize 
Christ’s meditation, 1, 261. 

Impossible, some things are in their own 
nature, il, 26, 27. Some things so to the 
nature and being of God, and his per- 
fections, ii. 27—29. Some things so, be- 
cause of God’s ordination, ii, 29, 30. Do 


INDEX. 


not infringe the almightiness of God's 
power, ii. 29—30. 

Incarnation of Christ, the power of God 
seen in it, il. 59—65. 

Incomprehensible, God is so, i. 894, 395. 

Inconstancy, natural to man, i. 350—353 
In the knowledge of the truth, i. 350, 
351; in will and affections, i. 351; in 
practice, i, 852—354; is the root of 
much evil, 20. 

Infirmities, the knowledge of God a com 
fort to his people under them, i. 488, 
489. The goodness of God in bearing 
with them, 11. 309. His patience a com- 
fort under them, ii. 516. 

Injuries, men highly concerned for those 
that are done to themselves; little for 
those that are done to God, i. 140. God’s 
patience under them should make us re- 
sent them, ii. 517, 518. 

Injustice, a contempt of God’s dominion, ii, 
435, 

Innocent person, whether God may inflict 
eternal torments upon him, ii. 375, 380, 
381. 

Instruments, men are apt to pay a service 
to them rather than to God, i. 144; 
which is a contempt of divine power, ii. 
94, 95; and of his goodness, ii, 324, 325. 
Deliverances not to be chiefly aseribed 
to them, i. 407. God makes use of sin- 
ful ones, i. 534, 585. None in creation, 
i, 40—42. The power of God seen in 
effecting his purposes by weak ones, ii. 
58, 59. 

Inventions of men.—See Addition and 
Worship. 


J. 


Jehovah signifies God’s eternity, i. 290; and 
his immutability, i. 330. God called so 
but once in the book of Job, ii. 36. 

Job, when he lived, ii. 8. 

Jonah, how he came to be believed by the 
Ninevites, i. 537. 

Joy, a necessary ingredient in spiritual 
worship, i. 234—236. Should aecompa- 
ny all our duties, ii. 468, 469. 

Judging the hearts of others, a great sin, i. 
478,479. Their eternal state a greater, 
ib. 

Judgment-day, necessity of it, i. 470, 471, 
5838, 584. . 

Judgments, extraordinary, prove the being 
of God, i 74,75. Men are apt to put 
bold interpretations on them, 1.133. God 
is just in them, i. 162, 163; especially 
after the abuse of his goodness and pa- 
tienee, ii. 326, 327, 506, 507. On God’s 
enemies, matter of praise, ii, 110. De- 
elare God’s holiness, 11. 182—135; which 
should be observed in them, ii. 197. Not 
sent without warning, ii. 241, 242, 488— 
491. Mercy mixed with them, ii. 242, 
248. God sends them on whom he 
pleases, ii. 420. Delayed a long time 


INDEX. 583 


where there is no repentance, ii. 491, ! 


492. God unwilling to pour them out 
when he cannot delay them any longer, 
ii. 492, 493. Poured out with regret, ii, 
493, 494; by degrees, ii. 494, 495, 
moderated, ii 49%, 496.—See Punish- 
ments, 

Justice of God, a motive te worship, i. 207. 
Its plea against man, i. 554—556. Re- 
conciled with merey in Christ, i. 556, 
557. Vindictive, natural to God, ii. 181 
—183. Requires satisfaction, ii, 185, 
186. 

Justification cannot be by the best and 
strongest works of nature, i. 166, 478, 
474; 11.177, 178, 185, 186. The holi- 
ness of God appears in that of the gos- 
pel, ii. 138. The expectations of it by 
the outward observance of the law can- 


not satisfy an inquisitive conscience, ii. 


212. Men naturally look for it by works, 
ii, 212, 213. 


K. 


Kingdoms are disposed of by God, ii. 418, 
414. . 

Knowledge in God hath no succession, i. 
284, 285, 294, 295, 454—456. Immu- 
table, i. 321—324, 460. Arguments to 
prove it, i. 8983—395, 461—465. The 
manner of it incomprehensible, i. 324, 
325, 428, 429, 438. God is infinite in it, 
i 409. Owned by all, i. 409, 410. He 
hath a knowledge of vision and intelli- 
gence, speculative and practical, i. 411, 
412; of apprehension and approbation, 
i. 412, 418. Hath a knowledge of him- 
self, i.414—417. Of all things possible, 
i. 417—420 ; of all things past and pres- 
ent, i. 420—422. Of all creatures, their 
actions and thoughts, 1. 422—427. Of 
all sins, and how, i. 427—429. Of all 
future things, he alone, and how, i. 429 
—439. Of all future contingencies, 1. 
439—446. Doth not necessitate the will 
of man, i. 446—451. It is by his essence, 
i. 452, 453. Intuitive, i. 453—456. In- 
dependent, i. 456, 457. Distin t, i. 458, 
459. Infallible, i. 459. No blemish to 
his holiness, i. 461—465. Infinite, at- 
tributed to Christ, i. 465—469. Infers 
his providence, i. 469, 470; and a day 
of judgment, i. 470, 471; and the resur- 
rection, i. 471, 472. Destroys all hopes 
of justification by anything in ourselves, 
i. 472, 478. Calls for our adoring 
thoughts of him, i. 478, 474; and humili- 
ty, i. 474, 475. How injured in the 
world, and wherein, i. 475—483. Com- 
fortable to the righteous, and wherein, i. 
483—491. Terrible to sinners, i. 491, 
492. We should have a sense of it on 
our hearts, and the advantages of it, i. 
492—497. 

Knowledge of Ged’s will, men negligent in 


using the means to attain it, i. 100, 101. 
Enemies to it, and have no delight in it, 
i. 101—108. Seek it for by-ends, i. 104. 
Admit it with wavering affections, ib. 
Seek it, to improve some lust by it, i. 
105, 106. A sense of man’s, hath a 
greater influence on us than that of 
God, i. 144, 145, 479, 480. Sins against 
it should be avoided, i. 178. Distinct 
from wisdom, i. 508. Of all creatures, 
is derived from God, i. 462, 463. Ours, 
how imperfect, i. 474, 475. 


L. 


Law of God, how opposite man naturally 
is to it—-See Man. There is one in the 
minds of men, which is the rule of good 
and evil, i. 69, 70. A change of them 
doth not infer a change in God, i. 346. 
Vindicated, both as to the precept and 
penalty, in the death of Christ, i. 565— 
567. Suited to our natures, happiness, 
and conscience, i. 527—529; 11.253. We 
should submit to them, i. 608, 604. The 
transgression of them punished by God, 
i. 182, 188, 898, 394. God’s enjoining 
one which he knew man would not ob- 
serve, no blemish to his holiness, ii. 148. 
To charge them with rigidness, how 
great a sin, ii. 178, 179. We should 
imitate the holiness of them, ii, 199— 
201. The goodness of God in that of in- 
nocence, ii. 252—254. Cannot but be 
good, ii. 339, 340. He gives laws to all, 
il. 388, 389. Positive ones, 7b. His 
only reach the conscience, ii. 390, 391. 
Dispensed with by him, but cannot by 
man, ii. 391—3898, 480, 431. To make 
any, contrary to God’s, how great a sin, 
ii. 431, 432; or make additions to them, 
ii, 432, 488; or obey those of men be- 
fore them, ii. 483—435, 467, 468.—See 
Governor and Magistrates. 

Licentiousness, the gospel no friend to, i. 
504. 

Life, eternal, expected by men from some- 
thing of their own.—See Justification. 
Assured to the people of God, i. 356. 

Light, a glorious creature, il, 343, 344. 

Light of nature shows the being of a God, 
1, 27—29. 

Limiting God, a contempt of his dominion, 
li, 439. 

Lives of men at God’s disposal, ii. 421, 422. 

Love to God, sometimes arises merely from 
some self-pleasing benefits, i, 149—151. 
A necessary ingredient in spiritual wor- 
ship, i. 231, 232. A great help to it, 1.272. 
God is highly worthy of it, 1. 308 ; 11. 196, 
197, 3832—335. Outward expressions of 
it insignificant without obedience, ii. 213, 
214. God’s gospel name, ii. 257, 259. 
Of God to his people, great, ii. 449, 450. 

Lusts of men make them atheists, 1. 24, 25. 


584 
M. 


Magistracy, the goodness of God in settling 
it, ii. 800, 301. 

Magistrates are inferior to God ; to be obe- 
dient to him, it 444, 445. Ought to 
vovern justly and righteously, ii. 445. To 
be obeyed, 11. 445, 446. 

Man could not make himself, i, 45—49. 
The world subservient to him, i, 58—55. 
The abridgment of the universe, i. 64; ii. 
248, 249. Naturally disowns the rule 
God hath set him, i. 99—117. Owns any 
rule rather than God’s, i.117—121. Would 
set himself up as his own rule, i. 121—127. 
Would give laws to God, i. 127—135. 
Would make himself his own end.—See 
ind. His natural corruption how great, 
ill, 58, 54. Made holy at first, ii, 126, 

27, 248,; yet mutable, which was no 
blemish to God’s holiness, ii. 140—143. 
Made after God’s image, ii. 248. The 
world made and furnished for him, ii. 
249—252. In his corrupt estate, with- 
out any motives to excite God’s redeem- 
ing love, ii, 268—273. Restored to a 
more excellent state than his first, ii. 
291—293. Under God’s dominion, ii 
384— 386. 

Means.—See Instrument. Lo depend on 
the power of God, and neglect them, is 
an abuse of it, 11. 96. Of grace, to neg- 
lect them an affront of God’s wisdom, 1. 
589, 590. Given to some, and not to 
others, ii, 4083—407. Have various in- 
fluences, ii. 407, 408. 

Meditation on the law of God, men have 
no delight in, 1. 101, 102. 

Members, bodily, attributed to God do not 
prove him a body, i. 188—190. What 
sort of them attributed to him, i. 189; 
with a respect to the incarnation of 
Christ, i. 189, 190. 

Mercies of God to sinners, how wonderful, 
i, 161, 162. A motive to worship, i. 206 
—208. Former ones should be remem- 
bered when we come to beg new ones, i. 
277,278. Its plea for fallen man, i. 556, 
557. It and justice reconciled in Christ, 
i. 557,558. Holiness of God in them to 
be observed, ii. 197, 198. Contempt and 
abuse of them—See Goodness. One 
foundation of God’s dominion, ii 371, 
872. Call for our love of him, ii. 232—— 
235; and obedience to him, ii, 338, 339. 
Given after great provocations, ii. 496, 
497. 

Merit of Christ, not the cause of the first 
resolution of God to redeem, ii. 265, 266. 
Not the cause of election, ii, 396. Man 
incapable of, i. 848, 344. 

Miracles prove the being of a God, though 
not wrought to that end, i. 29, 76. 
Wrought by God but seldom, 1.550. The 
power of God, ii. 84, 85; seen no more in 
them than in the ordinary works of na- | 


INDEX. 


ture, i 51, 52. Many wrought by Christ, 
li. 64, . 

Moral goodness encouraged by God, ii. 303, 
304. 

Moral law, commands things good in their 
own nature, i. 94, 95; ii. 889. The holi- 
ness of God appears in it, ii. 128. Holy 
in the matter and manner of his pre- 
cepts, li. 128—180. Reaches the inward 
man, ll. 130. Perpetual, ii. 180, 181.— 
See Law of God. Published with maj- 
esty, U. 390. 

Mortification, how difficult, i. 164, 165. 

Motions of all creatures in God, ii. 49. Va- 
riety of them in a single creature, ii. 50. 

Mountains, how useful, i. 54. Before the 
deluge, i. 278. 

Mouth, how curiously contrived, i. 65. 


N. 


Nature of man must be sanctified before it 
can perform spiritual worship, i. 223, 
224. Human, highly advanced by its 
union with the Son of God, ii. 278, 274. 
Human and divine in Christ.—See 
Union. 

Night, how necessary, i. 523. 


0. 


Obedience to God, not true unless it be 
universal, i. 108, 109. Due to him upon 
the account of his eternity, i. 308, 309. 
To him should be preferred before obe- 
dience to men.—See Laws. Of faith only 
acceptable to God, i. 505. Distinct, but 
inseparable from faith, i. 505, 506. Shall 
be rewarded, i. 529, 530. Redemption 
a strong incentive to it, i.571. Without 
it nothing will avail us, ii, 213, 214. The 
goodness of God in accepting it, though 
anperfect, i, 309. Due to God for his 
goodness, li. 8838—341. » Due to him as a 
sovereign, ll. 462—466. What kind of 
it due to him, ii. 466—469. 

Objects, the proposing them to man which 
God knows he will use to sin, no blemish 
to God’s holiness, u. 161—166. , 

Obstinacy in sin a contempt of Divine 
power, li. 92, 93. i 

Omissions of prayer a practical denial of 
God’s knowledge, i. 481; of duty, a con. 
tempt of his goodness, ii. 320, 821. 

Omnipresence, an attribute of God, i. 366, 
367. Denied by some Jews and hea- 
thens, but acknowledged by the wisest 
amongst them, i. 368. To be understood 
negatively, 1. 369. Influential on all 
creatures, i. 869, 370. Limited to sub- 
jects capacitated for this or that kind of 
it, 1.370. Essential, i.371. In all places, i. 
371,872. With all creatures, i. 8378, 874 ; 
without mixture with them, or division 
of himself, i 3874. Not by multiplica- 
tion or extension, i. 875; but totally, 7d. 


INDEX. 


In imaginary spaces beyond the world, 
i. 375—877. God’s incommunicable prop- 
erty, i 378 Arguments to prove his 
omnipresence, i. 878—885. Objections 
against it answered, i. 885—392. As- 
eribed to Christ, i. 392, 393. Proves God 
a Spirit, i. 893 ; and his providence, 70. ; 
and omniscient and incomprehensible, 1. 
394, 895. Calls for admiration of him, 
1.395 396. Forgotten and contemned, i. 
396, 397. Terrible to sinners, i. 397, 
398. Comfortable to the righteous, and 
wherein, i. 398—402. Should be often 
thought of, and the advantages of so 
doing, i. 402—405. 

Opposition in the hearts of men naturally 
against the will of God, i. 102, 103. 


bi 


Pardon, God’s infinite knowledge a com- 
fort when we reflect on it, or seek it, 1. 
490,491. The power of God in granting 
it, and giving a sense of it, ii, 78—80. 
The spring of all other blessings, ii. 3577. 
Always accompanied with regeneration, 
ib. Punishment remitted upon it, i. 
358. It is perfect, ib. Of God, and his 
alone, gives a full security, il. 450. 

Patience under afflictions a duty, i. 604, 
605. God’s immutability should teach us 
it i. 859. A sense of God’s holiness 
would promote it, ii, 195, 196; and his 
goodness, ii. 850. Motives to it. i. 469, 
470, The true nature of it, i. 471. Con- 
sideration of God’s patience to us would 
promote it, li. 518. 

Patience of God how admirable, i. 161, 395, 
396; ii 497—500. His wisdom the 
ground of it, i. 581, 582. Evidences his 
power, li 64, 474. Is a property of the 
Divine nature, ii. 477, 478. A part of 
goodness and merey, but differs from 
both, ii. 478—480. Not insensible, con- 
strained, or faint-hearted, ii. 480, 481. 
Flows from his fulness of power over 
himself, ii. 481, 482. Founded in the 
death of Christ, ii. 482, 483. His vera- 
city, holiness, and justice no bars to it, 
ji, 4883—486. Exercised towards our 
first parents, Gentiles, and Israelites, il. 
486—488. Wherein it is evidenced, il. 
488—500. The reason of its exercise, ii. 
500—507, It is abused, and how, ii. 507 
—509. The abuse of it sinful and danger- 
ous, li. 509—513. Exercised towards 

sinners and saints, ii. 513, 514. Com- 
fortable to all, ii. 514—516; especially 
to the righteous, ib. Should be medita- 
ted on, and the advantage of so doing, il. 
516—518. Weshould admire and bless 
God for it, with motives so to do, ii. 518 
—522. Should not be presumed on, ii. 
522,523. Should be imitated, ii. 523, 524. 

Poems, fewer sacred ones good, than of any 
other kind, i. 143. 


535 


Peace, God only can speak it to troubled 
souls, ii. 79. 

Permission of sin, what it is, and that it is 
no blemish to God’s holiness, ii. 146— 
156. 

Persecutions, the goodness of God seen in 
them, ii. 809—311. See Apostasy. 

Perseverance of the saints a gospel doctrine, 
i. 501. Certain, i. 355, 856 ; ii. 100, 189. 
Motives to labor after it, i.860, 861. De- 
pends on God’s power and wisdom, i. 
500, 501; ii. 79, 80. 

Pleasures, sensual men strangely addicted 
to, i. 144. We ought to take heed of 
them, i. 178. 

Poor, the wisdom of God in making some 
80, i. 531, 532. 

Power, infinite, belongs to God, ii. 10, The 
meaning of the word, ii. 12. Absolute 
and ordinate, ii. 12, 18. Distinct from 
will and wisdom, ii. 14,15. Gives life 
and activity to his other perfections, 1i. 
15,16. Of a larger extent than some 
others, ii. 16. Originally and essentially, 
in the nature of God, and the same with 
his essence; ii. 17, 18. Incommunicable 
to the creature, i 18, 24. Infinite and 
eternal, ii. 18—26. Bounded by his de- 
cree, ii. 25, 26. Not infringed by the 
impossibility of doing some things, il. 26 
—30. Arguments to prove it is in God, 
ii, 30—35. Appears in creation, 11. 85— 
44; in the government of the world, ii. 
4459; in redemption, ii. 59—65; in 
the publication and propagation of the 
gospel, ii. 65—74; in planting and pre- 
serving grace, and pardoning sin, i. 74— 
80. Ascribed to Christ, ii. 80—86; and 
to the Holy Ghost, ii 86. Infers his 
blessedness, immutability, and provi- 
dence, ii. 86—88. A ground of worship, 
ii, 88—90; and for the belief of the re- 
surrection, ii. 90—92. Contemned and 
abused, and wherein, iit. 92—96. Terri- 
ble to the wicked, ii. 96—98. Comfort- 
able to the righteous, and wherein, ii. 
98—102. Should be meditated on, li. 
102, 103; and trusted in, and why, ii. 
103—106. Should teach us humility and 
submission, ii. 106; and the fear of him, 
and not of man, ii. 106, 107. 

Praise, consideration of God’s wisdom and 
goodness would help us to give it to him, 
i. 597, 598; ii 351. Men backward to 
it, ii. 856, 35%. Due to him, ii. 459, 460. 

Prayer, men impatient if God do not an- 
swer it, i. 152, 153. We should take 
the mest melting opportunities for secret 
prayer, i. 275. Not unnecessary because 
of God’s immutability and knowledge, i. 
348—350, 479. To ereatures a wrong 
to God’s omniscience, i. 475, 476. Omis- 
sion of it a practical denial of God’s 
knowledge, i. 481. It is a comfort that 
the most secret ones are understood by 
God, i. 486—488. God’s wisdom a com- 


536 


fort in delaying or denying an answer to 
them, i. 598. For success on wicked de- 
signs how sinful, ii. 175, 176. God fit to 
be trusted in for an answer of them, ii 
188, 189. The goodness of God in ap- 
swering them, ii 807—309. His good- 
ness a comfort in them, ii. 841, 349. 
God’s dominion an encouragement to, and 
ground of it, ii. 451, 462, 468. 

Preparation, we should examine ourselves 
concerning it before worship, i. 252, 253. 
Consideration of God’s knowledge would 
promote it, 1 495,496. How great a sin 
to come into God’s presence without it, 
il. 176, 177. 

Presence of men more regarded than God’s, 
i144. We should seek for God’s special 
and influential presence, i. 405. See Om- 
nipresence, 

Preserve himself, no creature can, i. 48, 49 ; 
i. 46,47. God only can the world, i. 62, 
63. ‘The power of God seen init, ii. 44— 
47. One foundation of God’s dominion, 
ii. 371. 

Presumption springs from vain imagina- 
tions of God, 1.157. A contempt of God’s 
dominion, ii. 440, 441. 

Pride, how common, i. 139. An exalting 
ourselves above God, i. 147, 148. The 
thoughts of God’s eternity should abate 
it, i. 303. An affront to God’s wisdom, i. 
592. Of our own wisdom, foolish, i. 600, 
601. God’s mercies abused to it, ii, 323. 
A contempt of his dominion, ii. 439, 440. 

Principles better known by actions than 
words, i. 92, 98. Some kept up by God 
to facilitate the reception of the gospel, 
1. 576, 577. 

Propagation of creatures, the power of God 
seen in it, ii. 47—49. Of mankind one 
end of God’s patience, ii. 504. 

Prophesies prove the being of God, i. 76, 
vi F 


Promises, men break them with God, i. 116, 
117, 851, 358. Of God shall be per- 
formed, i. 800, 301; ii. 99, 100, 516. We 
should believe them, and leaye God to 
his own season of accomplishing them, i. 
499. Distrust of them a contempt of 
God's wisdom, i. 598. The holiness of 
God in the performance of them to be 
observed, ii. 197, 198. 

Providence of God proved, i. 398, 394, 469, 
470; ii. 87, 88—See Government of the 
world. Especially to his church, and the 
meanest in it, i. 406—408. Extends to 
all creatures, il. 296—300. Distrust of 
it, a contempt of God’s goodness, ii. 319, 
320. 

Punishments.—See Judgments. God al- 
ways just in them, 1. 162, 168; ii. 326, 
327. Of sinners eternal, i. 296, 297. 
The wisdom of God seen in them, i. 548. 
Necessarily follow sins, ii. 181—183. Do 
not impeach God’s goodness, ii. 286—244. 
Not God’s primary intention, ii. 240, 241. | 


INDEX. 


Inflicting them a branch of God’s domm- 
ion, li. 898, 394; necessarily follow upon 
it, i. 447. Of the wicked unavoidable 
and terrible, ii. 447—449. 

Purgatory held by the Jews,i. 126. 


R. 


Rain, an instance of God’s wisdom anu 
power, i. 522. 

Reason should not be the measure of God’s 
revelations, i. 602, 603. 

eepentance, how ascribed to God, i. 341, 
342. A reasonable condition, i 573. 
The end of God’s patience, ii. 502—504. 
The consideration of God’s patience would 
make us frequent and serious in the 
practice of it, ii. 517, 518. 

eprobation consistent with God’s holiness 
and justice, ii. 146, 147. 

Steproof may be for evil ends, i. 154. 

fteputation, men more concerned for their 
own, than God's glory, i. 140. 

Resignation of ourselves would flow from 
consideration of God’s wisdom, i. 604, 
605 ; should from that of his sovereignty, 
i 457. 

Restraint of men and devils by God in 
mercy to man, 1. 582, 588, il. 52—54, 154, 
301, 416—418, 

Resolutions, good, how soon broken, i. 351. 

Resurrection of the body no incredible doc- 
trine, 1.471, 472, ii. 90—92. The power 
of God in that of Christ, ii. 65. Of men, 
ascribed to Christ, ii, 84, 85. 

Reverence necessary in the worship of God, 
L236, 2817. 

Revelations of God are not to be censured, 
i. 590, 591. 

Riches, inordinate desire after them a hin- 
drance to spiritual worship, i. 273. God 
exercises a sovereignty in bestowing 
them, ii. 411, 412. 

Rivers, how useful, i. 522, 523. 

tome, why called Babylon, i. 39. 


S. 


Sacraments, the goodness of God in appoint- 
ing them, ii. 287, 288. _ 
Salvation of men,how desirous God is of 
it, li. 284—287, 500—502. 
Sanctification deserves our thanks as much 
as justification, li. 357, 358.—See Holi- 
ness. f 
Satisfaction of the soul only in God, i. 74, 
202, 203, 805, 306. Necessary for sin, ii. 
183, 184. 
Sceptics must own a First Cause, i. 51. 
Scofing at holiness a great sin, ii. 170; and 
at convictions in others, ii. 191, 192. 
Scriptures are wrested and abused, i. 105, 
106, 134, 185. Ought to be prized and 
studied, i178. The not fulfilling some 
predictions in them, doth not prove God 
to be changeable, i. 8342—845. Of the 


INDEX. 537 


Old Testament give credit to the New ; 
and of the New illustrate those of the 
Old, i. 503. All truth to be drawn thence, 
ib. Of the Old Testament to be studied, 
ib. Something in them suitable to all 
sorts of men, i. 528—5380. Written so 
as to prevent foreseen corruptions, 1. 530, 
531. To study arguments from them to 
defend sin, a contempt of God’s holiness, 
ii. 175. The goodness of God in giving 
them as a rule, ii. 804, 305. 

Sea, how useful, i. 54, 55. The wisdom of 
God seen in it, i. 522; and his power, ii. 
7, 45, 46. 

Searching the hearts of men, how to be un- 
derstood of God, i, 427, 428. 

Seasons, the variety of them necessary, i. 
523. 

Secresy, a poor refuge to sinners, i. 491, 
492. 

Secret sins cause stings of conscience, i. 71, 
42, 463; known to God, i. 394, 397, 398, 
490, 491; shall be revealed in the day 
of judgment, i. 470, 471; prayers and 
works known to God, i. 486—488. 

Security, men abuse God’s blessings to it, 
ii. 323. 

Self, man most opposite to those truths 
that are most contrary to it,i.107. Man 
sets up as his own rule, i.121. Dissatis- 
fied with conscience when it contradicts 
its desires, i. 123, 124. Merely the 
agreeableness to it the springs of many 
materially good actions, i. 124—126, 149 
—154, 240, 241. Would make it the 
rule of God, i. 127—185; and his own 
end, and the end of all creatures, and of 
God.—See End. Applauding thoughts 
of it how common, i. 138, 1389. Men 
ascribe the glory of what they have or 
do to it, i. 139, 140; desire doctrines 
pleasing to it, <b; highly concerned for 
any injury done to it, i, 140; obey it 
against the light of conscience, i. 140, 
141; how great a sin this is, i. 141, 142. 
The giving mercies pleasing to it, the 
only cause of many men’s love to God, i. 
149, 150. Men unwieldy to their duty 
where it is not concerned, i. 151, 152: 
how sinful this is, i. 154,155. The great 
enemy to the gospel and conversion, i. 
165. 

Self-love threefold, i. 136. The cause of all 
sin, and hindrance of conversion, i. 135— 
138. 

Service of God, how unwilling men are to 
it, i. 112—114; slight in the perform- 
ance of it, 1.113, 114; show not that natu- 
ral vigor in it as they do in their world- 
ly business, i, 1183—115 ; quickly weary 
of it, i. 114, 115; desert it, i. 115—117. 
The presence of God a comfort in it, i. 
401, 402. Hypocritical pretences for 
avoiding it, a denial of God’s knowledge, 
i. 481, 482. A sense of God’s goodness 


would make us faithful in it, ii. 389 —341. 
Some called to, and fitted for more emi- 
nent ones in their generation, ii. 410— 
416. Omissions of it a contempt of God’s 
sovereignty, ii. 441. 

Sin founded in a secret atheism and self- 
love, i. 98, 1836—188. Reflects a dis- 
honor on all the attributes of God, i. 93, 
94. Implies Godis unworthy of a being, 
ib. Would make him a foolish, impure 
and miserable being, i. 94, 95. More 
troublesome than holiness, i 111, 112. 
To make it our end, a great debasing of 
God, i. 144—146. No excuse, but an ag- 
gravation, that we serve but one, i. 145, 
146. Abstinence from it proceeds many 
times from an evil cause, i. 150, 479, 480. 
God’s name, word, and mercies, made 
use of to countenance it, i 154; ii. 172, 
173, 321—824, 508, 509. Spiritual to 
be avoided, i, 208, 204. It is folly, 1. 
295, 296. Past ones we should be hum- 
bled for, i. 801, 302, 492, 498. Hath 
brought a curse on the creation, 1. 315.— 
See Creatures, Past known to God, i. 
420, 421; all known to him, and how, i. 
494—481, 493, 494. A sense of God’s 
knowledge and holiness would check it, 
494, 495; 11.194. Bounded by God, 1. 532, 
583. God brings glory to himself, and 
good to the creature out of it, 1 583—— 
544. God hath shown the greatest ha- 
tred of it in redemption, i. 567, 568. A 
contempt of God’s power, ii. 92. Ab- 
horred by God, ii, 118—122, 181, 182. 
In God’s people more severely punished 
in this world than in others, 1i. 120, 121. 
God cannot be the author of it in others, 
or do it himself, ii, 122—127. God pun- 
ishes it, and cannot but do so, il. 132, 
138, 182, 183. The instruments of it 
detestable to God, ii. 188, 1384. Opposite 
to the holiness of God, ii. 171, 172. To 
charge it on God, or defend it by his 
word, a great sin, ii 174,175. Entrance 
of it into the world doth not impeach 
God’s goodness, ii. 231, 232. Those that 
disturb societies most signally punished 
in this life, ii, 8301, 302. A contempt of 
God’s dominion, ii. 427—431. How much 
God is daily provoked by it, ii. 497—499. 
519,520. An abuse of God’s patience, ii. 
508, 509. 

Sincerity required in spiritual worship, i. 
925, 226. Cannot be unknown to God, 
i. 486. Consideration of God’s know- 
ledge would promote it, i. 496. 

Sinful times; in them we should be most 
holy, ii. 198, 199. 

Sinners, God hath shown the greatest love 
to them, and hatred to their sins, i. 567, 
568. Everything in their possession de- 
testable to God, li. 183, 134. 

Society, the goodness of God seen in the 
preservation of it, ii. 300—302. Could 


538 


not exist without restraining grace— 
See Restraint, — 

Soul, the vastness of its capacity, and 
quickness of its motion, i. 67, 68. Its 
union to the body wonderful, i. 69. God 
only can satisfy 1t—See Satisfaction. 
They only can converse with God, i. 202. 
Should be the objects of our chiefest care, 
i, 2038. We should worship God with 
them, i. 209—211. 
goodness of God seen in them, ii. 49, 247, 
248. 

Spaces, imaginary beyond the world, God 
is present with, i. 375—377. 

Spirit, that God is so, plainly asserted but 
once in scripture, i 180. Various ac- 
ceptations vf the word, i. 181, 182. That 
God is so, how to be understood, 78. 
God the only pure one, i. 182, 183, 
Arguments to prove God is one, i. 188— 
188. Objection against it answered, i. 
188—190. 

Spirit of God, his assistance necessary to 
spiritual worship, i. 224, 225. 

Spirits of men raised up, and ordered by 
God as he pleases, ii. 415, 416. 

Subjection to our superiors, God remits of 
his own right for preserving it, ii. 301, 
302. 

Suecess, men apt to ascribe to themselves, 
1.189. Not to be ascribed to ourselves, 
li, 8324, 325. Denied by God to some, ii. 
411, 412. 

Summer, how necessary, i. 528. 

Sun, conveniently placed, i. 58. Its motion 
useful, 1. 53,57. The power of God seen 
in it, i. 195, 196. 

Supper, Lord’s, the goodness of God in ap- 
pointing it, ii, 287, 288. Seals the cove- 
nant of grace, li. 288, 289. In it we 
have union and communion with Christ, 
ii, 289—291. The neglect of it reproved, 
ii, 291. 

Supererogation, an opinion that injures the 
holiness of God, ii. 179, 180. 

Superstition proceeds from vain imagina- 
tions of God, i. 156, 151. 

Swearing by any creature, an injury to 
God’s omniscience, i. 477, 478. 


if 


Temptatiens, the presence of God a comfort 
in them, i. 399; the thoughts of it would 
be a shield against them, i. 403. The 
wisdom and power of God a comfort un- 
der them, 1. 594; ii. 99. The goodness 
manifested to his people under them, ii. 
311—313. The thoughts of God’s soy- 
eignty would arm and make us watchful 
against them, ii. 456. 

Thankfulness, a necessary ingredient in 
spiritual worship, i. 238, 284. Due to 
God, il. 851, 352, 460, 518—522 ; a sense 


of his goodness would promote it, 1. 351. | 


The wisdom and | 


INDEX. 


Theft, an invasion of God’s dominion, ii. 
485. 

Thoughts should be often upon God, i. 87, 
88; seldom are on him, i. 143, 159, 160. 
All known by God only, i. 424—427; 
and by Christ, i. 467—469. Cherishing 
evil ones a practical denial of God’s know- 
ledge, i. 482, 483. Thoughts of God’s 
knowledge would make us watchful over 
them, i. 495. 

Threatenings, the not fulfilling them some- 
times, argue no change in God, i. 342— 
345. Are conditional, 2b. The goodness 
of God in them, ii. 255. Go before 
judgments.—See Judgments. 

Time cannot be infinite, i. 44, 45. 

Times of bestowing mercy, God orders as 
a sovereign, li. 412, 413. 

Tongue, how curious a workmanship i. 66. 

Traditions, old ones generally lost, i. 317, 
38. Belief of a God not owing merely 
to them, 70. 

Transubstantiation an absurd doctrine, ii. 
95. 

Trees, how useful, i. 54, 523. 

Trust in themselves, men do, and not in 
God, i. 150. We should not in the world, 
i, 8304—8017, 857, 858. God the fit ob- 
ject of it, i, 484, 485, 569, 570, 583; ii. 
1038, 104, 188, 335—387, 462, 463; means 
to promote it, i. 497 ; ii. 454, 455. Should 
not in our own wisdom, i. 600, 601. In 
ourselves, a contempt of God’s power 
and dominion, ii. 94, 95, 436, 487. God’s 
power the main ground of. trusting him, 
li, 104, 105 ; and sometimes the only one, 
li. 105, 106. Should be placed in God 
against outward appearances, ii. 198. 
Goodness the first motive of it, ii. 336. 
More foundations of it, and motives to it 
under the gospel than under the law, ii. 
337. Gives God the glory of his good- 
ness, 1. 837, 888. God’s patience to the 
wicked, a ground for the righteous to 
trust in his promise, ii. 516. 

Truths of God most contrary to self, man 
most opposite to; and to those that are 
most holy, spiritual, lead most to God, 
and relate most to him, i. 107. Men in 
constant in the belief of them, i. 350, 351. 


U, 


Ubiquity of Christ’s human nature con 
futed, i. 378. 

Venial sins, an opinion that reproaches 
God’s holiness, ii. 179. 

Virtue and vice not arbitrary things i. 93, 
94, 

Unbelief, the reason of it, i. 165. A con 
tempt of Divine power, ii. 95; and good 
ness, li, 819. 

Union of soul and body an effect of Al- 
mighty power, i. 69. 

Union of two natures in Christ, made no 


INDEX. 5389 


change in his Divine nature, i 339, 340. 
Shows the wisdom of God, i. 552—568. 
How necessary for us, i. 563—566. Shows 
the power of God, ii. 62. Explained, ii. 
62, 68 —See Incarnation. 

Usurpations of men an invasion of God’s 
sovereiguty, i. 430, 431. 


W. 


Water, an excellent creature, ii. 224. 

Weakness, sensibleness of a necessary in- 
gredient in spiritual worship, i. 232. 

Will of God cannot be defeated, i. 95, 96. 
Man averse to it—See Man. The same 
with his essence, i. 325, 326. Always 
accompanied with his understanding, i. 
326. Unchangeable, i. 326—328. The 
unchangeableness of it doth not make 
things willed by him so, i. 327, 828. 
Free, 2b. How concurrent about sin, i. 
147, 148. 

Will of man not necessitated by God’s fore- 
knowledge, i. 446—451 ; subject to God, 
ii, 385, 386. 

Winds, how useful, i. 522. Y 

Winter, how useful, 1. 523. 

Wisdom, an attribute of God,i. 507. What 
it is, and wherein it consists, 7b. Distinct 
from knowledge, i. 508. Essential, which 
is the same with his essence; and per- 
sonal, 76. In what sense God is only 
wise, i. 509—514. Proved to be in God, 
i. 515—518. Appears in creation, i. 
518—525. In the government of man 
as rational, i. 525—582; as fallen and 
sinful, i. 582—544; as restored, 1. 544— 
552. In redemption, i. 552—571. In 
the condition of the covenant of grace, i. 
571—574. In the propagation of the 
gospel, i. 574—580. Ase ibed to Christ, 
1.580. Renders God fit to govern the 
world, and inclines him actually to gov- 
ern it, i 580—582. <A ground of his 
patience and immutability in his de- 
erees, i. 582,583. Makes him a fit object 
of our trust, i. 583. Infers a day of 
judgment, i. 583, 584. Calls for a vene- 
ration of him, i. 584. A ground of 
prayer to him, i. 585. Prodigiously 
contemned, and wherein, i. 585—593. 
Comfortable to the righteous, i. 593—595. 
In creation and government should be 
meditated on, and motives to it, 1. 595— 
598. In redemption to be studied and 
admired, i. 598—600. To be submitted 
to in his reyelations, precepts, provi- 
dences, i. 602—605. Not to be censured 
in any of his ways, i. 605, 606. 

Wisdom, no man should be proud of, or 
trust in, i. 600, 601. Should be sought 
from God, i. 601, 602. 

World was not, and could not be from 
eternity, i. 44—46, Could not make it- 
self, i 47—49. No creature could make 


it, i 49, 50. Its harmony, i. 52—60. 
Greedily pursued by men, i 143, 144. 
Inordinate desires after it a great hin- 
drance to spiritual worship, i. 273. Our 
love and confidence not to be placed in 
it, i. 804, 315, 816. Shall not be annihi- 
lated, but refined, i 811—314.—See 
Creatures. We should be sensible of 
the inconstancy of all things in it, i. 356, 
357; our thoughts should not dwell 
much on them, i. 857; we should not 
trust or rejoice in them, i. 357, 358. 
Not to be preferred before God, i. 358, 
359. Made in the best manner, ii. 24, 25. 
Made and richly furnished for man, ii. 
249—251. A sense of God’s goodness 
would lift us up above it, ii. 351. 


Worship of God, a folly to neglect it, i. 87, 


88. If not according to his rule, no bet- 
ter than a worshipping the devil, i. 118, 
119. Men prone to corrupt it with their 
own rites and inventions, i. 133, 1384. 
Spiritual, men naturally have no heart 
to, i. 160. Cannot be right without a 
true notion of God, i. 198. Should be 
spiritual, and spiritually performed, i. 
205, 206. God’s spirituality the rule, 
though his attributes be the foundation 
of it, i. 206—208 ; li. 88—90. Spiritual, 
to be due to him, manifest by the light 
of nature, though not the outward means 
and matter of an acceptable worship dis- 
coverable by it, i. 208-211. Spiritual, 
owned to be due to God by heathens, i. 
209, 210. Always required by God, i. 
211, 212. Men as much obliged to it as 
to worship him at all, i. 212, 213. Cere- 
monial law abolished to promote it, i. 
218—219. Legal ceremonies did not 
promote, but rather hinder it, i, 214— 
916. By them God was never well- 
pleased with, nor intended it should be 
durable, i. 216—219. Under the gospel 
it is more spiritual than under the law, 
i. 219. Yet doth not exclude bodily 
worship, i. 219—222. In societies, due 
to God, i. 221. Spiritual, what it is, and 
wherein it consists, i. 222—242. Due to 
God, proved, i. 242—249. Those re- 
proved that render him none at. all, i. 
249, A duty incumbent on all, i. 249, 
250. Wholly to neglect it a great de- 
gree of atheism, i. 250, To a false God, 
or in a false manner, better than a total 
neglect of it, 1. 250, 251. Outward, not 
to be rested in, i. 251, 252. We should 
examine ourselves of the manner of it, 
and in what particulars, 1. 252—256. 
Spiritual, it is a comfort that God re- 
quires it, i. 256. Not to give it to God, 
is to affront all his attributes, i. 263— 
271, 481. To give it him, and not that 
of our spirits, is a bad sign, 1 268, 269. 
Merely carnal, uncomfortable, unaccept- 
able, abominable, 1. 269—271. Directions 


540 


for spiritual, i. 271—2475. Immutability 
of God, a ground of worship, and en- 
couragement to it, i, 848—850. Bring- 
ing human inventions into it an affront 
to God’s wisdom, i. 587—589.—See Cere- 
monies. A strong sense of God’s holi- 
ness would make us reverent in it, ii. 
194. We should carry it holily in it, ii. 
207. Ingenuous, would be promoted by 
a sense of God’s goodness, ii. 8348. Slight 
and careless, a contempt of God’s sover- 
eignty, ii. 440, 441; and so is omission 


INDEX, 


of it, ii. 441. Thoughts of God’s sover 
eignty would make us diligent in it, ii, 
455, 456. 


Worship of creatures is idolatry, i. 194— 


196, Not.countenanced by God’s omni- 
presence, i. 890, 391. 


Wrong, God can do none, i. 171, ii. 442, 448. 


Z. 


Zeal, sometimes a base end in it, i, 154. 


A TABLE 


OF THE 


PLACES OF SCRIPTURE EXPLAINED IN THIS BOOK. 


XViil. 
Xxii. 
XXxH, 
xiv. 
xlvil. 


vi. 
ix. 
XV. 
XXXL 


XXXILL. 
XXXLV. 


GENKSIS. 
Ver Vol. Page 
| i. 519, ii. 36 
26 Lis oes 42 
7 i, 64, il. 249 
17 Tg. 483 
8 U. 493 
15 De © 6 
26 i. 221, ii. 489 
6 i, 343 
19 1. 427 
12 ; ib. 
30 A. ill 
4 L 310 
31 iL 222 
EXODUS. 
1} L 482 
14 1. 287 
24 iL. 490 
3 il. 36 
16 il. 55 
ll li. 108 
10 i. 241 
is ii. 219 
9 il. 497 
NUMBERS. 
i4 is 190 
DEUTERONOMY. 
23 34 i. 445 
10 i 185 
1 KINGS. 
94 i. 315 
39 1, 467 
2 KINGS. 
SP Sh ae 112 
1, 4, 5 i. 342, 344 
2 CHRONICLES. 
16 & 118 


Chap. 


lv. 


xvi. 
XxX. 
XXLV. 
XXV1. 
XXX1. 
XXXIV. 


XXXVHil. 


Psalm 


1. 

li. 

li. 
lviii. 
lyiii. 
lvili. 
lxii. 
xix. 
xxiv. 
Ixxvi. 


lxxviil. 


Ixxvill. 


Xc. 


JOB, 


PSALMS. 


bet 
Poe Ee PPE 


M 


—_ 


ot 
ee 


478, 


_ exh 
€xlil. 
CXXX, 
@XXXI1X. 
CXXxXix. 
OXXXIX. 
CXXXIX. 
CXXXIx. 
exly, 
exivii. 
exlvii. 
exlvii. 


vill. 
vill. 
Vill. 
ix. 
XV. 
xvi. 


iv. 
ix. 
XXLX. 
XXXIV. 
XXXVUL 
xi. 

xii. 
xiii. 
xlv. 
xlv. 
xlvili. 
hii. 

liv. 
xvi. 


vi. 
vii. 
Xi. 
Xv. 
XV. 
Xxi. 
XXili. 
cXXil. 


hi. 


PLACES OF SCRIPTURE iWXPLAINED. 


Ver Vol. Page | 
ip aA : : YVR ho a? 
Sr j 470 | 

25—27 i. 810—314 
8—-28 j 847, 348 
5 1. 358 

14 tee RY 489 
19 1 358, 359 
2 TE pogeie 42 
381 1. 315 
25 i. 163 
19 i. 195 

20 1 4} 
5 1. 885 
4 i. 206 
2 i 445 
7--9. i 372 

15, 16. 12 64 

‘LG es L. 435 

285024. ic 490 

ee hey i 218 
1—3. i, 406, 407 
4 i, 407; 1. 382 
5 1 sete, 408 

PROVERBS. 

12 a 518 

22 1.294; 11,428 

30 On 415 

10 1. 41 

TU Ie : ‘ i, 425 
4a", : et | 155 

ECCLESIASTES. 
0 ey Nees ; : 1. 90 
ISAIAH. 

LOs aes i B17 
Dare. ‘ i. 60 
6 i; 465 

15 i, 483 
4 1. 312 
1,5 i. 842 

T5arg 1, 379 

21, 22 i. 431 

20M L 115 
5 i. 416 

yl 1 449 

10 U 310 
4,5 1b. 

16 1 518 
1 i 317 

JEREMIAH. 

21 ae 1 162 

2} i 217 
9 1 352 
15 il 474 

Vi : 1 427 
35, 36 he a ae 313 
16—24 i. 863—366 

oT li 488 

LAMENTATIONS. 
oo. : Pen ae | 492 


Chap. 
iv. 
vill. 
ix. 

Xi. 
XVilL 
Xx, 


Vii. 


iil. 


i, 


EZEKIEL. 
Ver. Vol. Page 
6 il. 492 
Jd il, 114 
10 li. 493 
16 il. 310 
25 ii. 475 
33 li. 452 
DANIEL. 
9 i. 197 
HOSEA. 
5 5 i. 510 
oun. ii, 494, 507 
16 re 230 
19 li. 449 
5 il 184 
12 ll. 494 
4 il. ib. 
7 li. 427 
5 a on 
15 ii. 3824 
12 1. 100 
15 rb 194 
10 1. 236 
8 ; ne. 493 
12, 18 i, 494; ii, 508, 523 
1 235 
JOEL. 
4 i. 494 
AMOS. 
6 1 5 .946,146 
2 ib 418 
JONAH. 
4,10. 1; 342 
MICAH. 
2 L 204 
NAHUM. 
1,2 ii, 472, 473 
at a ie li. 478—477 
HABAKKUK. 
16 i: 144 
ZEPHANIAH. 
12% il. 489 
ZECHARIAH. 
: i 325 
3 i6 886 
16 i 234 
MALACHI. 
31, 14 1. 113 
5 ; i. 471 
6 il. 497 


PLACES OF SCRIPTURE EXPLAINED. 


MATTHEW. 
Ver. Vol Page 
US eer’: il 60 
Ow a Sin) MAES ia 
48 it, «= 478, 528 
11 Il 188 
23 7 413 
6 c 110 
10 i. 414 
Le 1. 413 
MARK 

Sue 3 . b. 209—211 
LUKE. 

85 il 59 

20 T 359 
JOHN: 

Bt aes : yee, 83 
10—24 : : i. 176—178 
Aa ts ; .1. 177—179, 205 
Nove. : BURT EL! 81 
64 1 468 
37 1 234 

3 ll 3716 
30 1 393 
SOL. 1 449 
389, 41. eal hs 186 

Dros 1 293, 340 

ACTS. 
51 1 108 
18 ll ; 66 
28 1 867, 373 
30 iy 487 
ROMANS. 

ee : ; es 225 
1921 127, 28, 42,519 ; 11, 216 
23 , 3 Ns 886 
US ae : : . 80 

4 : it 502 

9—12 i 90 
mnt ; i at 180 

7 i. 219 

6 iy 214 

8 i, 102 

4 i. 566 
10 hyd 484 
Oi é ' - i. 313 
38, 39 : P i. 509 
38, 39 il. 395 
6 iw): 214 
29 ii, 482, 507 
18 il. 501 

1 i. 220 | 

tae tine 515 | 
25—27 i. 498—507 


1 CORINT MIANS. 
ZEyn ; a? 


518 


| Chap. 


il. 
i. 
x 


iii, 


il. 


ie 
is 


Ver. Vol. 
ha ae 2 : 1. 
Loew ; ‘ le 
ld aii ama, F 


2 CORINTHIANS. 
i Lar ‘ bi ttle 


GALATIANS. 


EPHESIANS. 


10 u 
18 1 
3 1 
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414 
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552 


214 


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